A cheery invitation to sock synergy when same-old, same-old palls.
A purple hippo in a polka-dot room learns that there’s more to personal style than matchy-matchy.
It’s a lesson worth the learning. In rhymes that set up each color for younger audiences to predict before the page turn, the portly protagonist rummages through her dresser, pairing her one red sock with…a blue one, then a green one, then a succession of other mismatches—none quite right—until she’s left with only one last option…polka dots. “ ‘Well, it’s not perfect. / And it’s definitely not red. // But at least it matches / my room!’ she said.” Young readers will survey the frustrated hippo’s increasingly cluttered digs with glee…and likely be unsurprised to discover (once she’s tottered off with a slipper on one foot and a spike heel on the other) that fugitive red sock crammed into a chair cushion. Mismatched socks pair up to demonstrate a broader point in C.K. Smouha and Eleonora Marton’s Sock Story (2019), but the suggestion here that “try, try again” with apparel choices (or anything else, for that matter) can lead to success, or at least some pleasant surprises, may inspire budding fashionistas to think outside the dresser drawer.
A cheery invitation to sock synergy when same-old, same-old palls. (afterword) (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-53411-026-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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