Roll, fetch, bite. Life is good for Buddy and Earl in this aerobic exercise of the imagination.
There are few things as pleasurable as a little nighttime adventure in which you get to trash the kitchen.
Chums Buddy the dog and Earl the hedgehog have had an eventful day and are ready for some slumber. At least Buddy is. Earl looks down from his cage at Buddy on the floor and whispers, “Wish me bon voyage.” Once Buddy is told what bon voyage means, he wants to know more, even if it does give him the collywobbles. Well, it means Earl is going to run, run, run. Pooped, Earl looks around: “This place looks eerily similar to the place I just left.” (The promise and treachery of the exercise wheel.) But there are other places to explore. It is squeeze-your-heart charming when Earl turns Buddy’s water bowl into a moonlit lake, and Buddy—the clumsy literalist—knocks over the garbage can only to find gold: meatloaf. There are monsters to tend with—hairbrush-eating purses, menacing vacuum cleaners—but better, there are fine sentences with which to wrestle: “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision”; “Wherever the road leads me....However long it takes.” Drawn with spare linework and great blocks of soft, dreamy color in a nighttime palette, the pals’ setting appropriately shifts between mundane and extraordinary, just like their adventure.
Roll, fetch, bite. Life is good for Buddy and Earl in this aerobic exercise of the imagination. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55498-714-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
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
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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