The tale has a random feel about it, but one might suppose that underpants of any gender are always amusing to the under-7...
Translated from the French, this tale based on the app Renaud le petit renard perhaps loses something in print.
Francis is a smartly dressed little fox who spends Saturdays with his father at Mr. Li’s Small Socks Laundromat. He likes getting away from his annoying little sister, Lola, but fears Mr. Li’s granddaughter, Lily Rain Boots, who is always playing tricks. He makes lists of things he likes about laundry day (mixing patterns and colors! Sock tossing!), but while he and his dad are out having frozen yogurt, Lily adds lots of extra detergent to their laundry. It makes a huge mess of bubbles and terrifies the laundry cat, whose name is Mouse. Calling for Mouse terrifies the buxom Madame Bernadette, who thinks it’s a real mouse. Lily guiltily cleans up the mess but not before playing one final trick, which involves the beribboned unmentionables of the zaftig Madame Bernadette. And that’s about it, but it takes over 90 pages to get there. The simple shapes in dusty pastels evoke a French or Québecois city in which animals walk upright and dress as nattily as the humans. Mr. Li and Lily are definitely Asian, and Madame Bernadette wears high heels and a heart-shaped neckline.
The tale has a random feel about it, but one might suppose that underpants of any gender are always amusing to the under-7 set. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-894786-40-9
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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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