Humorous without a trace of snark, this Spanish import hatches just right.
A girl’s quest for a pet, any pet, takes a turn when she finds a dinosaur egg in the park.
Ali is a little girl with puppy fever. And kitten fever. Really, she’d settle for just about any animal to call her own, but her parents shut her down. So of course when Ali finds the giant egg, she brings it home, and after a week of love and attention, a dinosaur hatches. Cleverly, Ali asks her parents for a dinosaur. When they indulgently tell her, “Okay, if you find one, you can adopt one,” Ali’s won. Kimo the saltasaurus is both cute and fast-growing, and the story concludes in the only way the laws of real estate allow: The dinosaur parents show up, and Kimo becomes a beloved occasional visitor. If the ending is predictable and the story familiar, this stands out in its above-and-beyond execution. The writing is snappy, especially when the dialogue is rendered in large hand-drawn letters (“WOAH, WOAH, WOOAAAHHH THAT’S A DINOSAUR!”), and the art throughout is consistently delightful. Kimo, of course, turns out to be the most adorable-est, cuddliest dino, and when he’s covered with licks by his adoring saltasaurus family while a child on a ladder pats one of the parents…let’s just say no reader will be able to resist. A Spanish-language edition, Adoptar un dinosaurio, proves just as charming. Ali and her parents present white.
Humorous without a trace of snark, this Spanish import hatches just right. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-84-17123-63-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: NubeOcho
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
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
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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
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