A soft-boiled animal detective story sure to please beginning readers.
It’s up to a rhino private eye to solve a mystery and prevent a cheater from winning the Big Race.
Private eye Mack Rhino and his trusty bird assistant, Redd, are off to buy new furniture (as the rhino has splintered yet another desk chair) when a mysterious phone call offers Mack his 100th case: a mystery concerning shoes. But the harried caller, who dropped clues off at the wrong address, doesn’t give Mack much to go on. Even worse, a jailbreak at the ant farm upstate means some of the usual suspects are back in action—and likely with an ally. Meanwhile, the two favorites for the Big Race are Jackie Rabbit, who wants to donate the prize money to build a playground, and Skunks McGee, under scrutiny for his track record of cheating. Other runners experience pre-race troubles in the form of vanishing shoelaces. Mack must think fast to distract Skunks during the race so that the sabotaged Jackie can win, and then to explain how Skunks did it—the suspected team-up with the Ant Hill Gang. The clues are clear enough for the target audience of emerging readers to solve the mystery themselves (the cast size and subplots made manageable with a cast of characters and glossary), and the puns bring laughs. Black-and-white cartoon illustrations tend to highlight slapstick.
A soft-boiled animal detective story sure to please beginning readers. (Mystery. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-4113-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts.
Can knightly deeds bring together a feathered odd couple who are on opposite daily schedules?
Having won over a dragon (and millions of fans) in the Caldecott Honor–winning Knight Owl (2022), the fierce yet impossibly cute nocturnal, armor-clad owlet faces a new challenge—sleep deprivation—in the wake of taking on Early Bird, a trainee who rises with the sun and chatters interminably: “I made pancakes! Do you like pancakes? I love pancakes! Where’s the syrup?” It’s enough to test the patience of even the knightliest of owls, and eventually Knight Owl explodes in anger. But although Early Bird is even smaller than her mentor, she turns out to be just as determined to achieve knighthood. After he tells her to leave, she acquits herself so nobly in a climactic encounter with a pack of wolves that she earns a place at the castle. Denise proves a dab hand at depicting genuinely slinky, scary wolves as well as slipping cheerfully anachronistic newspapers and other sight gags into his realistically wrought medieval settings to underscore the tale’s tongue-in-cheek tone. Better yet, a final view of the doughty duo sitting down together to a lavish pancake breakfast/dinner at dusk ends the episode in a sweet rush of syrup and bonhomie.
An immersive, charming read and convincing proof again that even small bodies can house stout hearts. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780316564526
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
