A revision that will still provoke reservations.
A Christmas picture book from the 1960s gets some updates.
Brown and De Witt’s 1966 collaboration about a lonely, solitary, kindhearted mouse who leaves a gift of cheese for Santa will be recognizable to many—including, perhaps, some who eschewed it for outmoded gender roles and racial stereotyping in a spread introducing the protagonist’s imaginary playmates. The original text reads, “The little girls would bring their dolls / And dress up and have tea. / The boys would all play cowboys / Or be Eskimos / Or Spanish / But when he’d try to touch them, / Like a bubble they would vanish.” The accompanying illustrations show “little girl” mice in hats and dresses for a tea party and boys with stereotypical costumes and props for their pretend play. The updated version uses the word “Inuit” instead of “Eskimo” but retains the concept of playacting ethnicity and the stereotypical illustrations of a matador and a harpoon-wielding, fur-clad rodent figure. On a brighter note, the revised text rejects strict gender norms and says, “some of them would bring their dolls [and] there were others who’d play cowboys.” Abetted by an expansion of page count from 20 to 32, changes in design and layout make for a cleaner look in the new version that will enhance read-alouds, but even massaged, the spread about playmates still sounds an off note.
A revision that will still provoke reservations. (Picture book. 2-7)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3793-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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