A Saturday-morning-cartoon introduction to squirrels and scatter hoarding.
Follow along as a squirrel gathers and hides food for the winter, finds and shares it during the wintry weather, and “plants” food for future winters.
The changing leaves and the narrator’s thickening coat prompt the squirrel to start caching food. Acorns, maple seeds, hazelnuts, tulip bulbs, some berries, and just a pinch of birdseed (“Birds need food for winter too”) get gathered and buried in many different hiding spots for the narrator and the other squirrels to later “seek and find.” When the snow covers the ground, the squirrels sniff out each hoard and return to their hole in a tree to feast. In the spring, caches that weren’t found can sprout and grow, sometimes producing another food source for the next winter, in this case, some pumpkins. The meter is bouncy, but the verses were clearly written with rhyme rather than meaning or reading ease in mind: “Eeek! A dog! I dash away. / He barks as up I flee. / ‘You can’t catch me from down there,’ / I chirp at him with glee.” Leschnikoff’s colorful digital mixed media illustrations highlight the cartoon narrator’s larger-than-life personality, the squirrel’s every facial expression and posed paw speaking volumes. Backmatter fills out the spare facts given in the text about squirrels’ caching behavior, their sharing and stealing food, and nine different squirrel species found around the world. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A Saturday-morning-cartoon introduction to squirrels and scatter hoarding. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781728235370
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together.
A clueless duckling tries to make a new friend.
He is confused by this peculiar-looking duck, who has a long tail, doesn’t waddle and likes to be alone. No matter how explicitly the creature denies he is a duck and announces that he is a cat, the duckling refuses to acknowledge the facts. When this creature expresses complete lack of interest in playing puddle stomp, the little ducking goes off and plays on his own. But the cat is not without remorse for rejecting an offered friendship. Of course it all ends happily, with the two new friends enjoying each other’s company. Bramsen employs brief sentences and the simplest of rhymes to tell this slight tale. The two heroes are meticulously drawn with endearing, expressive faces and body language, and their feathers and fur appear textured and touchable. Even the detailed tree bark and grass seem three-dimensional. There are single- and double-page spreads, panels surrounded by white space and circular and oval frames, all in a variety of eye-pleasing juxtapositions. While the initial appeal is solidly visual, young readers will get the gentle message that friendship is not something to take for granted but is to be embraced with open arms—or paws and webbed feet.
A sweet, tender and charming experience to read aloud or together. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-86990-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
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