Deliciously playful and imaginative.
A young Inuit boy loves bananas so much he eventually becomes one.
There’s no doubt that bananas are Benny’s absolute favorite food. The boy, who wears a T. rex costume wherever he goes, gobbles up banana pancakes for breakfast, rides a bicycle with a banana seat, and even eats his tacos with fried bananas and hot banana peppers. Benny eats so much of his beloved yellow fruit over weeks and months that one morning he wakes up to find he’s transformed into a bananasaurus rex. In many of the images, Benny can be seen wearing his patched-up, well-loved dino suit. In others he is drawn as an actual dinosaur, complete with a hungry mouth full of teeth, hitting maximum appeal for fans of the Cretaceous critter. The illustrations are charming, especially the impressive bananasaurus rex, its arms made of a peeling banana, its tail the stem. The book’s silliness is its strength; it will certainly reach imaginative little readers who might themselves be obsessed with a particular creature, costume, or food. Brown-skinned, brown-haired Benny uses the Inuktitut words for mother (Anaana) and grandmother (Anaanatsiaq), asking his Anaanatsiaq about the word for banana. An opening letter to readers explains these Inuktitut words, their uses in the book, and how to pronounce them. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Deliciously playful and imaginative. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781772274424
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Inhabit Media
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Still, this young boy’s imagination is a powerful force for helping him deal with life, something that should be true for...
Oliver, of first-day-of-school alligator fame, is back, imagining adventures and still struggling to find balance between introversion and extroversion.
“When Oliver found his egg…” on the playground, mint-green backgrounds signifying Oliver’s flight into fancy slowly grow larger until they take up entire spreads; Oliver’s creature, white and dinosaurlike with orange polka dots, grows larger with them. Their adventures include sharing treats, sailing the seas and going into outer space. A classmate’s yell brings him back to reality, where readers see him sitting on top of a rock. Even considering Schmid’s scribbly style, readers can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he ponders the girl and whether or not to give up his solitary play. “But when Oliver found his rock… // Oliver imagined many adventures // with all his friends!” This last is on a double gatefold that opens to show the children enjoying the creature’s slippery curves. A final wordless spread depicts all the children sitting on rocks, expressions gleeful, wondering, waiting, hopeful. The illustrations, done in pastel pencil and digital color, again make masterful use of white space and page turns, although this tale is not nearly as funny or tongue-in-cheek as Oliver and His Alligator (2013), nor is its message as clear and immediately accessible to children.
Still, this young boy’s imagination is a powerful force for helping him deal with life, something that should be true for all children but sadly isn’t. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-7573-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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