It’s time now for picture books to start weighing in on the Deepwater Horizon debacle. Reed’s effort is a tender beginning. A young boy is looking forward to a vacation fishing, swimming and building sand castles with his cousin, who lives on the Louisiana coast. When they arrive at the beach, they are dismayed to find blobs of oil polluting the sand and, worse, fouling three pelicans. Uncle Willie is fuming (“His jaw is clenched and quivering in a way that scares me,” says the boy) as he and Aunt Olivia and the kids get the birds to a wildlife rehab center. There commences the arduous process of strengthening the birds, washing and drying them. The text explains the cleaning process without becoming overly pedagogic, and the birds are returned to clean water. Reed doesn’t belabor the mess that the oil spill has caused, partly because that is not in the nature of her artwork, which is childlike and two-dimensional; the characters all have big potato heads (Uncle Willie does a very good angry potato head). This is not an Armageddon scenario—no birds die, down the road the beach is unpolluted—as the story pulls up short of that. Way too short: This object lesson needs perhaps a little sting, something to ensure remembrance of the dirty deed, whose long-term consequences won’t be known for years. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: April 18, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2352-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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