A gentle and slightly surreal celebration of the bond between child and toy.
A small child finds the best companionship in a toy bunny: animate, lively, and present always in both imagination and life.
The bunny asks, “What’s your favorite thing in the world?” The child responds by enumerating not one but many. The bunny helps the child find the right socks and blows on the oatmeal to cool it (the bunny likes toast and jam). They both like to play, and sometimes, they both like to watch. The child loves to look at the stars. “Someday we will count them all!” The child loves the bunny’s stories, too, sitting on a full-sized bed while the bunny reads aloud from its tiny bed with the carrot-patterned quilt. The digital and collage images are matte and flat, making wonderful use of pattern: a scattering of autumn leaves of many colors in the air and in a pile that the bunny jumps into; the square-tiled floors in the kitchen and bathroom; the profusion of stars on the last page. The child has a dark pageboy and a rosy-peach complexion. No adults appear, but a few other children do, with no obvious attempt to create a consciously diverse cast. The bunny, dressed only in shorts, does cartwheels on the front endpapers and wraps itself in the carrot quilt on the back.
A gentle and slightly surreal celebration of the bond between child and toy. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84780-685-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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 stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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