Particularly good for kids not ready to move beyond nonthreatening shark stories.
These twin sand sharks just love a good joke.
Flip and Fin are on their way to school when Flip tries out a joke on his brother: “What did the sawfish see?…He saw fish!” Ouch. Fin tells his twin that with Joke Day coming up at school, Flip is going to need a lot of practice to measure up. At school, while Fin builds a sandcastle with Swimmy the jellyfish, Flip tries out a joke on Molly the anglerfish. He forgets the punch line. When Flip and Fin play superheroes, though, Flip’s jokes improve—must be the cape. He keeps practicing. When Joke Day arrives, the big kids tell great jokes…but even with his cape on, Flip gets stage fright until Fin helps out from the audience. Then all the sea creatures have a joke-a-thon. Gill’s tale of finny, fraternal support is a fine fable. Everything works out, and some of the jokes are actually funny (though the audience at Joke Day laughs hysterically at the banana/orange knock-knock joke without the necessary setup). Numberman’s watercolor illustrations are inviting, expressive and silly in their cartoon, saucer-eyed exaggeration. The fishy facts at the close are a plus.
Particularly good for kids not ready to move beyond nonthreatening shark stories. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-224300-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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
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
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