Cute to occasionally cutesy—but not condescending.
Tired of horsies, duckies, and kitties? Meet the roseate spoonbill, the Irrawaddy dolphin, the gerenuk, and 45 like specimens of exotic wildlife.
Continuing the vocabulary-building they began in Big Words for Little Geniuses (2017), the Pattersons focus here on creatures with names that beg to be sounded out and relished—from the “silly-looking aye-aye” to the “adorable” dumbo octopus, axolotl, and jerboa. The animals are grouped into the rough categories “Flyers,” “Swimmers,” and “Crawlers,” and each is glossed with a few brief, crowd-pleasing facts or comments. The toucan “sounds like a cross between a pig and a frog!” The chinchilla “might pee on you if it gets scared. It also likes to eat its own poop.” Pan supplies stylized portraits in illustrations that are all bright colors and blobby shapes, as cheery as Matisse paper collages. The beginning and ending are abrupt, the stylization sometimes goes a bit too far (even veteran naturalists will have trouble puzzling out the Sunda colugo), and some selections, such as the angel shark and the blue poison dart frog, don’t seem especially “cuddly.” Still this parade will give the next generation of Jane Goodalls and Roger Tory Petersons a leg up on some of the wild kingdom’s more colorful (and sonorously named) residents.
Cute to occasionally cutesy—but not condescending. (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-48628-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
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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