A gentle delight, simultaneously honoring both the dog dePaola lost and the artist we lost in turn.
For this posthumously published work, dePaola draws one final time upon close personal experience to pen a picture book, this one an ode to his beloved dog Brontë.
Speaking in the first person, dePaola walks readers through the early days of Brontë’s life, from the moment he picked the pooch up at the airport to the pink collar the dog wore. As Brontë ages, he loses his sight but remains loving. And when the dog does at last die, dePaola moves through his grief, eventually finding comfort in the knowledge that “I knew you were right there, still with me, in my heart forever.” The story evokes other tender tales by dePaola, also inspired by moments in his life. Meanwhile, images throughout the book are peppered with references to dePaola’s books, like a spaghetti dinner attended by a guest reminiscent of the protagonist of the Caldecott Honor–winning Strega Nona. Tasked with illustrating the title after dePaola’s passing, McClintock pays tribute to his art while also managing to retain her own particular style. The love between man and dog is palpable in every spread. And while the book will speak to children who have said goodbye to pets of their own, it will also aid readers in grieving for the author himself.
A gentle delight, simultaneously honoring both the dog dePaola lost and the artist we lost in turn. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9781534418509
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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