When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way.
Flatt’s latest, the third in the Math in Nature series, encourages children to use math to measure.
Measuring with nonstandard units found in nature—footprints in the snow, otters in lakes, piles of porcupine leftovers—Flatt and Barron encourage children to look at the world in new ways. But this way of measuring may also confuse very young readers, for whom the book is best suited: “How far do flakes fall? / Is it one length for all? / The distance depends / on the start and the end.” One question on this spread asks readers to count “[h]ow many snowflakes deep is the snow?” The grid of blue, gray and purple flakes provides the answer—eight—but it doesn’t have any basis in reality. Other pages are more successful, encouraging readers to measure using the birds at two birdfeeders, bringing up the issue of the size of the measuring units—each is four birds long, but chickadees and cardinals are different sizes, as are their feeders. Distance, area, capacity, mass, time and comparisons round out the volume, which asks good questions, but children already need to have a good grasp of those concepts in order to answer them. Barron’s stunning cut-paper collages are the highlight of the book, while backmatter provides a paragraph of information about each of the featured creatures.
When read with a caring adult, this may challenge readers to look at measurement in a different way. (Math picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-926973-82-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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 stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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