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THE CAVE DOWNWIND OF THE CAFÉ

With luck, this brave, creative foodie’s adventures are just beginning.

With this prequel to The Café at the Edge of the Woods (2024), Please provides an entertaining backstory for Glumfoot, the clever, green, pointy-eared front-of-house staff member at Rene’s restaurant.

As it happens, Glumfoot’s green-skinned father is also a chef of sorts, happily stirring up “booger broth” each morning. Their cave is filled with vines and things bulbous, squishy, and strange. And cookbooks. Glumfoot reads one intently, dreaming of “something sweeter.” When Rene opens her business nearby, Glumfoot breathes in the aroma, apparently transported. But a nearby ogre is also intrigued (“I heard humans taste good”), and Glumfoot realizes he must convince the ogre otherwise. “Humans taste like fungus toes! And nasty things up the nose,” he tries. The ruse backfires, only whetting the ogre’s appetite. With some quick thinking, Glumfoot eventually persuades the ogre that humans taste horrid and then redirects the hungry creature and its family to “a little cave where Father makes an oozing, booger broth.” Rene happens to open the door to her establishment just as Glumfoot arrives to raid the bins; she hires him on the spot. Burnt orange and snot-green predominate in Please’s palette, and the antic, animated quality of his linework in these edge-to-edge illustrations informs a cheerful, enchanted landscape of cave and forest.

With luck, this brave, creative foodie’s adventures are just beginning. (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025

ISBN: 9780063345508

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025

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DRAGONS LOVE TACOS

From the Dragons Love Tacos series

A wandering effort, happy but pointless.

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The perfect book for kids who love dragons and mild tacos.

Rubin’s story starts with an incantatory edge: “Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well.” The playing field is set: dragons, tacos. As a pairing, they are fairly silly, and when the kicker comes in—that dragons hate spicy salsa, which ignites their inner fireworks—the silliness is sillier still. Second nature, after all, is for dragons to blow flames out their noses. So when the kid throws a taco party for the dragons, it seems a weak device that the clearly labeled “totally mild” salsa comes with spicy jalapenos in the fine print, prompting the dragons to burn down the house, resulting in a barn-raising at which more tacos are served. Harmless, but if there is a parable hidden in the dragon-taco tale, it is hidden in the unlit deep, and as a measure of lunacy, bridled or unbridled, it doesn’t make the leap into the outer reaches of imagination. Salmieri’s artwork is fitting, with a crabbed, ethereal line work reminiscent of Peter Sís, but the story does not offer it enough range.

A wandering effort, happy but pointless. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: June 14, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-8037-3680-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012

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LITTLE BLUE BUNNY

A sweet, if oft-told, story.

A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.

The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.

A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland

Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022

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