High marks for concept, art, design, and sheer visual energy.
In a seasonal round, crowds of bright flora and fauna ingeniously constructed from geometric forms pose playful challenges in shape and color recognition.
Two sturdy, toothed wheels turning under die-cut windows on either the right or the left of each big spread are the engines that drive this entry in the Turn Seek Find series. They invite viewers to choose one of four grayscale figures—a robin (this is a French import), a fir tree, a squirrel, or a snowflake in “Winter,” for instance—and one of four colors and then to spot the selection amid a seasonally themed riot of stylized shapes and saturated hues. Along with using evocative color schemes for the four seasons, Giordano fits his semi-abstract figures and their compositions together in such harmonious ways that the seek-and-find game may well take a back seat to the simple pleasures of just poring over each scene, letting lines and transitions guide exploratory eyes to fresh discoveries, seeing the plants and animals (there are many more than the quartet offered on each wheel), and basking in the golden glow of “ Fall” or shivering deliciously in the chilly blues of “Winter.” Still, the game is absorbing too, and it’s capped at the end with elements of the previous pictures recast in a joyous whirl of “All Year Round,” with apples, flies, clover, and frogs to spot. “Hooray, you found them! Now turn the wheels to play again!” The invitation will find no lack of takers.
High marks for concept, art, design, and sheer visual energy. (Novelty board book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-2-40800-789-8
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat.
Dinos that love to move and groove get children counting from one to 10—and perhaps moving to the beat.
Beginning with a solo bop by a female dino (she has eyelashes, doncha know), the dinosaur dance party begins. Each turn of the page adds another dino and a change in the dance genre: waltz, country line dancing, disco, limbo, square dancing, hip-hop, and swing. As the party would be incomplete without the moonwalk, the T. Rex does the honors…and once they are beyond their initial panic at his appearance, the onlookers cheer wildly. The repeated refrain on each spread allows for audience participation, though it doesn’t easily trip off the tongue: “They hear a swish. / What’s this? / One more? / One more dino on the floor.” Some of the prehistoric beasts are easily identifiable—pterodactyl, ankylosaurus, triceratops—but others will be known only to the dino-obsessed; none are identified, other than T-Rex. Packed spreads filled with psychedelically colored dinos sporting blocks of color, stripes, or polka dots (and infectious looks of joy) make identification even more difficult, to say nothing of counting them. Indeed, this fails as a counting primer: there are extra animals (and sometimes a grumpy T-Rex) in the backgrounds, and the next dino to join the party pokes its head into the frame on the page before. Besides all that, most kids won’t get the dance references.
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1598-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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