A crowd pleaser sure to squeeze out piles of giggles.
A raccoon drops a silly word over and over and OVER…but a little mouse will have none of it.
Set up to be a hilarity-inducing storytime back and forth, this monosyllabic all-caps exchange alternates an overalls-clad and increasingly frustrated raccoon provocatively misidentifying round objects with the titular epithet in louder and louder type and the poker-faced mouse (with a page turn) offering contradictory, rhyming counters. First, after the raccoon points at an egg and says, “POOP,” a squad of nattily dressed chickens marches out of a “NOPE, COOP.” Then a ball of yarn forms a “NOPE, LOOP,” and then a bear sinks a basketball through a “NOPE, HOOP,” and on, as characters pile up. Finally the crowd of followers at last stops at an ice cream truck for a “NOPE, SCOOP” (or two or three or four). And when, in a turn likely to excite as much honest dismay as schadenfreude in young audiences, the raccoon’s ice cream falls to the ground, the mouse answers his dismal “POOP” with a sympathetic “YEP.” The growing parade of simply drawn, egg-shaped animals in Hoffmann’s cheery illustrations adds both comical side business to keep readers poring over the pages and a clear sense of anticipation to the proceedings, and a pug in the last scene delivers a final, literal twist.
A crowd pleaser sure to squeeze out piles of giggles. (Picture book. 3-10)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944903-74-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cameron + Company
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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