Litter-ally not worth a look.
Will Kira’s next great idea be a purr or a hiss?
Elementary schooler Kira and her little brother, Ryan, live with their parents above the family’s cat cafe, The Purrfect Cup. The cats therein are from a local shelter and can be adopted (except Pepper, Kira’s best feline friend). Kira likes to help out in the cafe and with the cat adoptions and often has really good ideas (though not all pan out). When she hears that the King County Dog Show will be held in Bloomington, Kira gets the idea to enter the cafe cats in the show in hopes the increased visibility will get more of them adopted. She enlists her best human friend Alex Patel, her family, and Mr. Anderson, the owner of the art shop, in her plan. The trial run is a trial ruckus. But with Ryan’s help, Kira comes up with a new idea that is fashionably feline and fills the cafe with customers (and new cat adopters). Eschmann’s series opener features an improbable plot and an unrelentingly and unrealistically upbeat tone, not to mention a cockeyed conception of cat care. There are no real laughs, and the life lessons verge on didactic. Kira and Ryan appear to be Black; theirs is a diverse community.
Litter-ally not worth a look. (Fiction. 5-7)Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-78398-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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