Having led young viewers from sea to city and from night to day in Follow the Line (2006), Ljungkvist takes them on a house tour in this like-patterned follow-up—again starting an unbroken black line on the front cover that ends on the back and in between runs through each room while geometrically outlining furniture or small objects. Using various shapes in harmonious colors to fill in details and backgrounds, and integrating brief lines of text into the pictures, she pauses in the fridge, a closet, a toolbox and other storage areas to invite a bit of counting, identification or searching for scattered items. Similar in appeal but much simpler in style than Walter Wick’s I Spy series and its ilk, this doesn’t exactly signal a creative leap for the artist, but it does make an enjoyable way to increase attention span and visual literacy. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-06225-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
Essentially a follow-up to Robert Kraus’s Leo the Late Bloomer (1971) and like tales of developing competency, this follows an exuberant child from morning wash-up to lights out at night, cataloguing the tasks and skills he has mastered. Activities include dressing himself and joining in school activities, choosing his own books, helping with dinner and other household responsibilities, and taking a bath alone before bedtime. In Aliki’s sunny, simplified pictures, it’s a child’s world, seen from low angles and with adults putting in only occasional appearances. Like the lad, the fitfully rhymed text gallops along, sometimes a little too quickly—many illustrations are matched to just a word or two, so viewers aren’t always given much time to absorb one image before being urged on to the next—but underscoring the story’s bustling energy. Young readers and pre-readers will respond enthusiastically to this child’s proud self-assurance, and be prompted to take stock of their own abilities too. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-028929-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches...
Listeners will quickly take up the percussive chorus—“Dump it in, smash it down, drive around the Trashy town! Is the trash truck full yet? NO”—as they follow burly Mr. Gilly, the garbage collector, on his rounds from park to pizza parlor and beyond.
Flinging cans and baskets around with ease, Mr. Gilly dances happily through streetscapes depicted with loud colors and large, blocky shapes; after a climactic visit to the dump, he roars home for a sudsy bath.
Part of a spate of books intent on bringing the garbage collectors in children’s lives a little closer, this almost matches Eve Merriam’s Bam Bam Bam (1995), also illustrated by Yaccarino, for sheer verbal and visual volume. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 30, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027139-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1999
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