Tender, if a bit unwieldy from being so heavily back-loaded with background facts.
Stranded on a broken-off ice floe, a polar bear plunges to the rescue when her cub slips off the edge into the sea.
With cold almost tangibly radiating from expanses of ice and dim, hazy skies, even the frisky cub, rolling and tumbling in the feathery March snow, brings barely a hint of warmth to Minor’s frozen Arctic seascapes. Meanwhile his mother stands at the edge of the ice and searches the choppy waters for an unwary seal—until with a “CRACK!” both bears suddenly find themselves floating away from safety on a fragment of ice so small that the cub loses his footing. Before he can drown, his mother dives in after and, bearing him on her back, paddles back to shore, where the two nuzzle affectionately and then wearily pad off toward their unseen den. The disquisitions on climate change and on polar bear behavior, diet, and life cycles that Burleigh tacks on afterward are well meant but seem likewise laborious; younger audiences are likely to respond more to the displays of elemental connection between parent and offspring that infuse the episode and its illustrations.
Tender, if a bit unwieldy from being so heavily back-loaded with background facts. (author’s and artist notes, resource lists) (Informational picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781419760709
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
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
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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