Food for thought for monolingual mouselings—not to mention their parents and teachers.
A little mouse’s foreign-language skills save his family from a cat in this mother-daughter debut.
Reworking a Cuban folk tale (available in another version by Antonio Sacre and Alfredo Aguirre as The Barking Mouse, 2003), the authors introduce opera-loving mouse Mrs. Canta and her large family. Mrs. Canta speaks Cricket, Spider and Moth, as well as several human languages, so when the youngest, Chico Canta, echoes her “Dulces sueños, sweet dreams,” she exclaims “Bilingual” in approval. But Chico speaks more than just two languages, as he proves when a family production of Three Little Pigs is nearly spoiled by Little Gato-Gato and he leads the audience in a loud chorus of “Bow-wow! Bow-wow! Bow-wow!” that averts the threat. Everyone cheers: “Bilingual!” (Mora explains in an afterword that the term was chosen to “move the story along” and invites adult readers to introduce a more accurate one when appropriate). Seeing the head of the Big Bad Wolf costume hanging from a nail like a trophy in one scene may give viewers a brief turn, but in general, Carling’s illustrations capture the well-told story’s sweetly spirited tone, with views of tiny mice in colorful costume scampering about and away from a much larger but obviously young ginger kitten.
Food for thought for monolingual mouselings—not to mention their parents and teachers. (afterword) (Picture book/folk tale. 5-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55498-343-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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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