A good book for hatching new readers.
A playful porcupine kit ends up having ducklings imprint on him after their mother asks him to sit on her clutch of eggs.
At first it’s not Pip who sits but his mother. While she contentedly reads her book beneath a tree, “Pip goes up. He jumps. He plops. He peeks,” and accompanying vignettes show the little overalls-clad porcupine frolicking across the double-page spread. His activities come to a halt when a rather feckless Mother Duck takes a page from Dr. Seuss’ Mayzie and leaves Pip to sit on her eggs. And, like Horton before him, sit Pip does until the eggs hatch and the ducklings emerge, all calling him Mama. Firmly imprinted on Pip, they initially reject Mother Duck when she returns, until she leads them to the water to swim. At this point, Pip (who does not like water) misses his mother, and her arrival by Pip’s side creates a happy ending for ducks and porcupines alike. Morgan’s accompanying watercolor, gouache, and colored-pencil illustrations provide good support to help emergent readers decode the controlled text, and there’s a good balance of white space on some spreads to give rest to the eyes.
A good book for hatching new readers. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3676-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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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