Nurture overcomes nature when a tough-talking fox and a newly hatched chick cross paths. Discovering that he can’t eat anything that calls him “Papa,” Fox looks for a meal elsewhere—only to find little Fluff stubbornly following along, leaving Fox’s usual prey rolling on the ground in laughter. At last, rationalizing that Fluff needs to be with his own kind, Fox drops the cuddly chick off at the henhouse, but Fluff has picked up some fox-like habits, and after terrorizing peeping age-mates and full-grown hens alike, he’s ejected—setting the stage for a happy reunion. Fox, in a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans, projects a suitably bachelor-ish air in Bendall-Brunello’s (Mouse, Mole, and the Falling Star, p. 800, etc.) sketchy rural scenes, but Fluff seems to suffer from arrested development, as he’s still clad in yellow down when seen at the conclusion, teaching a class of forest denizens in Fox’s all-vegetarian school. Still, though no replacement for Lynn Reiser’s Surprise Family (1994), this too will nudge readers toward the idea that outer form is not the most important element in familial relationships. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8075-2544-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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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