Skip.
Mr. Potato’s birthday party is an opportunity for games, counting and Doodler’s execrable verse.
Invitations sent (but not counted), Mr. Potato excitedly prepares for his party. It’s fun at first, as his friends mingle and they all play party games, but then the doorbell rings again, and 20 potatoes fill the room. With no way to turn or move, things quickly get out of hand, and suddenly, the accessorized brown ovals become accessorized white dollops, the potatoes having been “smushed.” “But… / …now that they were mashed potatoes, / the party could resume. / The potatoes had a ball / with much more party room!” Readers will recognize the familiar counting rhyme, though unlike Iza Trapani’s remakes, the rhythm and rhyme are big misses—“One potato in the house. / Then two, three, four, / five potato, six potato, / knocked at Mr. Potato’s door”—and only get worse, Doodler rhyming “sixteen” with “thinking,” “come” with “everyone,” “friends” with “again.” Even the seemingly digital illustrations are ho-hum, lacking the visual pop and graphic interest found in his other books. Worst, there is a little in the way of takeaway from this—what should readers learn? To carefully count their invitees? To smush them to make them fit the party space? To be relieved, as Mr. Potato is, when the guests all leave? That Newtonian physics do not apply to potatoes?
Skip. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8517-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat.
Dinos that love to move and groove get children counting from one to 10—and perhaps moving to the beat.
Beginning with a solo bop by a female dino (she has eyelashes, doncha know), the dinosaur dance party begins. Each turn of the page adds another dino and a change in the dance genre: waltz, country line dancing, disco, limbo, square dancing, hip-hop, and swing. As the party would be incomplete without the moonwalk, the T. Rex does the honors…and once they are beyond their initial panic at his appearance, the onlookers cheer wildly. The repeated refrain on each spread allows for audience participation, though it doesn’t easily trip off the tongue: “They hear a swish. / What’s this? / One more? / One more dino on the floor.” Some of the prehistoric beasts are easily identifiable—pterodactyl, ankylosaurus, triceratops—but others will be known only to the dino-obsessed; none are identified, other than T-Rex. Packed spreads filled with psychedelically colored dinos sporting blocks of color, stripes, or polka dots (and infectious looks of joy) make identification even more difficult, to say nothing of counting them. Indeed, this fails as a counting primer: there are extra animals (and sometimes a grumpy T-Rex) in the backgrounds, and the next dino to join the party pokes its head into the frame on the page before. Besides all that, most kids won’t get the dance references.
It’s a bit hard to dance, or count, to this beat. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1598-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
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