This attractive title, which combines counting practice with a tour through a lively garden, invites and rewards leisurely...
This oversized board title uses flowers and a garden theme to help children’s counting skills blossom.
Children will count 10 different types of flowers as they make their ways through the garden, with rhyming couplets introducing their names. For example: “Five cherry blossoms opening in the trees. / Six crimson hollyhocks trembling in the breeze.” For each featured number, children can also find the same number of bees buzzing about the page, sometimes in plain sight and other times hiding behind a flap. The flaps, in the shapes of flower petals, trees, butterfly wings, and more, conceal all manner of critters, from stray bees to birds, ladybugs, foxes, and mice. Aside from the counting and lift-the-flap adventure, there is also the progression of the seasons to take in. Readers move from winter to early summer, and more and more critters join in the fun as the world warms. Ormes’ screen-printed and digital artwork makes this one a real treat. Children and adults alike will enjoy a romp through the charming, bustling garden she brings to life.
This attractive title, which combines counting practice with a tour through a lively garden, invites and rewards leisurely exploration. (Board book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8531-7
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Big Picture/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together.
A clueless duckling tries to make a new friend.
He is confused by this peculiar-looking duck, who has a long tail, doesn’t waddle and likes to be alone. No matter how explicitly the creature denies he is a duck and announces that he is a cat, the duckling refuses to acknowledge the facts. When this creature expresses complete lack of interest in playing puddle stomp, the little ducking goes off and plays on his own. But the cat is not without remorse for rejecting an offered friendship. Of course it all ends happily, with the two new friends enjoying each other’s company. Bramsen employs brief sentences and the simplest of rhymes to tell this slight tale. The two heroes are meticulously drawn with endearing, expressive faces and body language, and their feathers and fur appear textured and touchable. Even the detailed tree bark and grass seem three-dimensional. There are single- and double-page spreads, panels surrounded by white space and circular and oval frames, all in a variety of eye-pleasing juxtapositions. While the initial appeal is solidly visual, young readers will get the gentle message that friendship is not something to take for granted but is to be embraced with open arms—or paws and webbed feet.
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-86990-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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