A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word.
Art-loving Louise and her little brother, Art, cook up creative treats for the first-grade bake sale in this early-reader offering.
Throughout the book, which features a first-person text with controlled vocabulary, an unmentioned black cat accompanies bespectacled Louise and her robot-costumed brother, adding visual interest to the pictures. The opening spreads depict Louise with Art as she expresses her love for art of all kinds. “I see art in everything!” she exclaims while reading a baking cookbook. The next page depicts a notice on the refrigerator for contributions to a bake sale to fund a field trip. The children, who are both depicted as white with light skin, set out to bake and decorate “a rainbow of cupcakes.” They start with primary colors for the frosting and then mix them together for more options, but the process goes awry when Art combines too many colors and they end up with big bowls of gray frosting. “At least they taste good, even if they don’t look like art,” Louise generously states. Her eureka moment arrives when she repeats the phrase “Look like Art,” and a first-person visual perspective shows her comparing the gray-frosted cupcakes with the gray-helmeted Art. Inspired, Louise adds confectionary embellishments to the cupcakes, which make them look like little robots, too, and the “ROBO CAKES” are a hit at the bake sale.
A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-236366-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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