A friendship tale that soars.
Grounded personalities are curious about how to soar.
Willa the ostrich and Wade the penguin experiment with different means of achieving flight. Maybe they just need a running start? Or perhaps they need to be light on their feet. Some of their attempts end in a crash, but they always bounce back, undeterred. Sarhangpour depicts the pair with sparkles in their eyes and hearts fluttering around them—it’s evident they’re set on attaining their goal. After a day of attempts, they pause to reflect on what they’ve managed to accomplish: They had fun and helped each other. (Wade, a seasoned swimmer, gave Willa a lesson on how to float, while Willa gave an exhausted Wade a ride as they headed to the top of a cliff.) By the book’s conclusion, whether Willa and Wade will ever truly fly remains unclear, but they’ll definitely keep trying and learning together. Each page of this graphic novel contains one or two panels; anything the flightless friends say or do becomes the centerpiece of that page, sometimes against a blank background. The cartoonish art is simple and clear, and Willa and Wade’s friendship and optimistic spirit come through loudly: The two never assign blame for a failed idea and are always open to each other’s suggestions.
A friendship tale that soars. (Graphic early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781525308420
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2024
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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