For mouse-loving children and families looking for an alternative to the well-known poem.
A murine version of the classic Christmas poem.
“ ’Twas the night before Christmas, / when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring / …except for one mouse.” A little white mouse clad in a fur-trimmed red suit winks at readers and holds a shushing paw to its mouth. Turner goes on to give “A Visit From St. Nicholas” a mouse-themed spin, casting the reindeer as red and green stag beetles and sending her Santa “through / a crack in the wall” rather than down the chimney. Although she supplies the stag beetles with appropriate names (“On Scatter and Skitter!” urges Santa), curiously, she omits the narrator character from the tale, which gives the proceedings an incomplete air. Readers may be so busy looking at the details in Løvlie’s illustrations they may not feel the absence. She depicts snoozing mouse children in a tiny shoe, a matchbox, and a flour scoop; gives the stag beetles pink cheeks, black button noses, and smiles; and festoons the mouse hole with paper-mouse chains and dried fruit rounds. It’s all extremely cozy but kept from being cloyingly so with a limited palette of muted (rather than forest) green, red, and dark blue; the swooshes of snow Santa leaves in his wake give a bracing, fresh feeling.
For mouse-loving children and families looking for an alternative to the well-known poem. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5037-5495-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sunbird Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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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