A cozy filter through which to imagine growing up.
Known for animating America’s past for young readers, MacLachlan here imagines a community barn-raising from a century ago.
The setting is simply “a meadow,” leaving room for Pak’s atmospheric mixed-media and digital compositions to fill in physical and emotional elements. Burnt sienna is the predominant color of the landscape; it surrounds the minimalist figures like a textured veil, emphasizing their ties to the Earth. The narrator, 5 years old at the start, is identified by a red cap and dark hair. He holds the ladder while wooden frames are bolted to beams, plays with neighbors in the stream, and enjoys the celebratory picnic and the photograph that records the gathering. Characters have various skin tones—whether from ethnicity or sun, it is hard to say—but the protagonist and his family present white. This quiet tale captures the rhythm of rural life throughout seasons—and then over generations—with the solid structure at the center of daily chores, fond interactions with animals, sleepovers with cousins, and weddings. The moments of highest drama involve a wedding ring lost by the protagonist’s father during construction and recovered in a barn owl’s nest when the son has become the farmer. MacLachlan weaves in an abundance of details that will appeal to children with no firsthand experience with farming: “Once, a lamb named Baby pushed me over and licked my face with his little tongue.”
A cozy filter through which to imagine growing up. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-268773-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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
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
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