Certain to spark a love of art (and giggles) in feline aficionados.
What can kittens learn from great art?
“Come walk along with Mama Cat / and tour the works of art. / Inside each frame you’re sure to find / your own creative heart.” Mama Cat has some lessons for her kittens (and young humans), and she imparts them in rhyme as she describes 13 great works of visual art reproduced on double-page spreads with felines in place of the original humans. On a spread depicting Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (in which an orange-and-white cat stands on a shell covered in strands of yarn), Mama Cat urges her kittens to embrace the praise and adoration of humans. On a spread portraying Rembrandt van Rijin’s Night Watch, she tells young cats to be bold and have great adventures. And Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks spurs her to encourage the youngsters to tell tall tales of their adventures. In her first foray into children’s book illustration, artist Nyangsongi inserts her plump, adorable, happy felines into the great works. She doesn’t mimic the brushwork of Vincent van Gogh or Georges Seurat, but the inspiration of each spread will be obvious (to adult readers). Bailey’s rhyme bounces along through each lesson with the tone of a loving, reassuring mama cat. This attractive volume has just one misstep; out of 13 works, only three are by artists of color—Laura Wheeler Waring, Katsushika Hokusai, and Henry Ossawa Turner—and only one is by a woman (Waring). (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Certain to spark a love of art (and giggles) in feline aficionados. (further information on the original works) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-6051-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Magic Cat
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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