A well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful blend of eco-awareness and aquaculture.
A wild stork receives some loving care when it becomes caught in netting on Maya’s kibbutz during the annual migration from Africa to Israel.
Maya’s abba is a fish farmer and each year protects his stock from hungry, swooping storks by placing netting across the ponds. But when one stork’s feet become entangled, she breaks her wing in her struggle to free herself. Maya rescues and cares for the injured stork, naming her Yaffa, “pretty” in Hebrew. As Yaffa heals, a pair of storks make their nest in a tree on the kibbutz, producing three little chicks. When the mother leaves, never to return, the male stork, named Tzadok (“righteous”) by Maya, remains but needs a partner to scavenge for and feed the chicks. Yaffa is gently introduced and placed in the nest to help the young family until the chicks are ready to fly. Watercolors in muted natural hues on textured paper add a sense of serenity to the tale. It is unusual in its depiction of an Israeli kibbutz, though it does little to portray the distinctiveness of kibbutz life, beyond references to the other farmers; the focus on Maya’s altruistic act obscures the authentic portrayal of the collective business of farming fish.
A well-meaning but ultimately unsuccessful blend of eco-awareness and aquaculture. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4677-1395-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kar-Ben
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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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