It’s much better than a phonics worksheet, but it’s a shame these photos serve such dull storytelling.
“Kate and Nate bake a cake for Grandpa Jake.”
Kate and Nate are snails, three-dimensional characters crafted out of wool and adorned with real shells on their backs. When they see a fabric snake, they are very scared and try to evade him with one of the modes of transportation available—trains, planes, and boats. (Little do they know that he is Grandpa Jake’s “great mate.”) A real wooded area serves as backdrop; it almost seems as if the photos are movie stills, but the scenes have been specifically constructed for this volume, one of a growing series with one simple aim: to teach phonics by introducing one sound at a time. This volume introduces the long “a” with commonplace words like “place,” “plate,” “sail,” and “trail.” The pictures are intriguing and use many different kinds of materials and objects, including a real lit candle atop the cake, a toy wooden rolling pin, and a graceful toy boat with a beautiful sail with a very handsome snail design. Young readers will pore over the pages, perhaps trying to figure out how they might create such scenes. In the meantime, they will probably absorb the lesson and learn some decoding skills. Two story-starter ideas round out the volume. Four other titles publish simultaneously: Blues for Unicorn, Go Home, Goat, Greedy Beetle, and Lion Spies a Tiger.
It’s much better than a phonics worksheet, but it’s a shame these photos serve such dull storytelling. (Early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: April 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63592-097-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Kane Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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