A polished, playful story in which words and pictures dance in perfect harmony.
Complementing When Spring Comes (2016) and In the Middle of Fall (2017), a picture book that celebrates the winter season.
In small bites of text that allow pauses for readers to savor the illustrations and to connect with their own winter recollections, this accomplished picture book details the season of winter. Henkes’ text is simple but evocative, observing winter in perceptive and sometimes-playful detail. Dronzek’s acrylic illustrations—presented in a variety of double-page spreads, spot illustrations, and single-page images—enrich and deepen the text as they add story details and warmth with their saturated colors and masterful line. An amusing series of spot illustrations punctuated with perfect text engages readers in the laborious chore of dressing for winter (“Boots and zippers / and vests and zippers / and jackets and zippers”). The opening double-page spread—a park in winter with people of various skin tones sledding, building a snowman, skating, talking, and walking their dogs—becomes the grounding point for the story. As the story meanders along (in a very good way), readers will recognize the pond, the house, the child from the opening illustration, which deepens the overall narrative. When, at the story’s end, winter becomes spring, the same park scene is shown but now with blooming cherry trees and green grass, and so the cyclic nature of the seasons is visually emphasized.
A polished, playful story in which words and pictures dance in perfect harmony. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-274718-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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