There are roadblocks aplenty, but this still could please hardcore seek-and-find fans.
Mouse needs to catch Gorilla! Can readers help to get him through the maze of streets in time?
Gorilla drives fast through the busy marketplaces, construction sites, farmland, mountains, and more, but Mouse and his motorcycle are persistent. Bright, busy, Richard Scarry–like compositions create mazes of roads, cars, and critters that lead from page to page as readers are given clues—abetted by strategically placed arrows—as to how Mouse can catch up to Gorilla. Multiple members of a cartoon menagerie reappear throughout but not on every page, making for a fun scavenger hunt as big-eared Mouse chases the fedora-clad Gorilla, whose light beige face, broad chin, and lack of neck are evocative of characters from Family Guy and American Dad. The white arrows are sometimes necessary, as in a very complicated market scene, but at other times they don’t make much sense. In one river scene, for instance, they plot the path on planks of wood laid between boats; here the path is obvious, but readers may be more concerned at the notion of motoring over boaters than delighted. Just why is Mouse in pursuit of Gorilla? That’s benign, but a visual subplot involving a different gorilla seen lurking with a bag of cash on many spreads before being cuffed by turtle cops disappointingly plays into negative stereotypes surrounding black people, apes, and criminality.
There are roadblocks aplenty, but this still could please hardcore seek-and-find fans. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-358-21220-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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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