Lightning can strike twice: 12 years after Wheels on the Bus (1990), Zelinsky offers another pop-up tour de force, infused with humor and replete with astonishing special effects. Rather than huge, explosive constructs à la Robert Sabuda, Zelinsky and his paper engineer have gone for restrained, natural-looking, often multiple movements; as a child rises, dresses, and steps out of his house, the verses of the counting song are acted out on him by a succession of gnomish figures hiding beneath flaps, whisking across cutout windows, or popping out of slots. Some tabs control several actions at once—most notably on the penultimate spread, which not only contains an inventive reprise of the song, but sends all ten of the little old men, plus assorted dogs, rolling separately down a hill with a single pull. In a brilliant final flourish, each little old man literally “plays” his assigned number as if it were a musical instrument, while the lad claps delightedly along. The complex popups require complicated (read: fragile) inner works, but they’re sturdy enough to survive, at least for a while, the enthusiastic knicking and knacking this will certainly inspire. Children aren’t the only readers who’ll want to roll home with this treasure. And everyone will want more than one copy. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-525-46908-7
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
This heavily earnest celebration of multi-ethnicity combines full-bleed paintings of smiling children, viewed through a golden haze dancing, playing, planting seedlings, and the like, with a hyperbolic, disconnected text—``Dark as leopard spots, light as sand,/Children buzz with laughter that kisses our land...''— printed in wavy lines. Literal-minded readers may have trouble with the author's premise, that ``Children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea'' (green? blue?), and most of the children here, though of diverse and mixed racial ancestry, wear shorts and T-shirts and seem to be about the same age. Hamanaka has chosen a worthy theme, but she develops it without the humor or imagination that animates her Screen of Frogs (1993). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-688-11131-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
Summertime fun.
Summer vacation is the stuff children’s dreams are made of.
This collection of verse begins with that first day a child can sleep in instead of being woken up for school by the alarm clock (“BEEP-BEEP-SNOOZE”) and ends with the first day back at school. In between, full-color cartoon illustrations and short, upbeat poems, usually one per page, explore how children in diverse communities spend their summers. They line up on the sidewalk after hearing “the jingle jangle of the ice-cream truck!” They cool off by playing on a backyard slip 'n slide or by visiting the neighborhood pool, the lake, or the beach (where a child builds a sand castle only to see it washed away and another listens to a seashell). Summer also means a family road trip with all-too-frequent rest stops and a motel stay with treats like a giant TV, “teensy soaps and teensy shampoo / and beds made for bouncing.” A trip to an amusement park is captured in a creative shape poem about the thrills of a log ride and playful font changes that emphasize the ever changing perspective found on a Ferris wheel. Summer also includes going to camp as well as camping out in the backyard and enjoying s’mores and an astronomy lesson from Grandpa. As in the creators’ other Here I Come! books, the verse is peppy, with details sure to get kids jazzed, brought to life by the exuberant cartoon art. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Summertime fun. (Picture book/poetry. 4-8)Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-38721-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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