An informative and entertaining tale of an intriguing location and a warm family relationship.
In this Canadian import, a girl spends the summer with her grandmother on an island in the Pacific Northwest.
The evocative story is told from the first-person point of view of the unnamed girl, who appears to be 10 or 11. She spends each summer with Gran at her cozy log cabin on an island in the Salish Sea, which is the collective name of the waterways of coastal British Columbia and Washington state. Lovely, atmospheric watercolor illustrations show the girl and her grandmother spending idyllic weeks together exploring the beach, gardening, fishing, and cooking. The child visits their neighbor, Joe, who is carving an eagle on a cedar totem pole. He tells the girl stories and speaks about eagles, explaining that you must earn an eagle feather in order to keep one. In both the U.S. and Canada, ownership of eagle feathers is legal only for Indigenous people, opening the door for readers to see Joe and possibly the girl and her grandmother as Canadian First Nations people. The girl and her grandmother have golden-tan skin and brown hair; Joe has reddish-tan skin and graying black hair. The story unfolds with a calm, peaceful tone, indicating the secure relationship between granddaughter and grandmother and the reassuring certainty of annual traditions in a protected environment. Several terms in the text are not well defined, such as jigging for fish, “midden,” and “petroglyph.” A glossary and map and a clear indication of whether or not the characters are Indigenous people would have improved the accessibility of the story.
An informative and entertaining tale of an intriguing location and a warm family relationship. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4598-1345-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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
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Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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