Brisk and bright, if a tad one-dimensional.
An imaginative little girl dreams of an exotic pet.
Sam, who wears big square glasses and a serious expression, just got a hamster, her first pet. He mostly sleeps and eats, she notes, "and gets his shavings wet." She is far from impressed. Why can't she have a unicorn? They'd “prance through fields of posies,” and she could "shine her horn with candy corn." Or what about a hippogriff? He might scare the dogs in the dog park. A pet sasquatch could be fun (except for combing out its snarled fur), or what about flying on the back of a gryphon? If she had a kraken, she could go on deep-sea dives. A kirin needs acres of grass, a jackalope requires “sturdy reins for bumpy, jumpy rides.” If Sam had a dragon, she'd probably need a fire extinguisher, and a manticore would require intensive dental care. What about a harpy? Too screechy. A basilisk? Too slippery. Mermaids brush their hair all day, fairies play too many tricks, kelpies are hard to catch. Sam looks at her hamster again, staring at her with big bright eyes, cute tiny feet, and a furry belly. Just right after all. VanSickle delivers lean, bouncy verse and an impressive array of offbeat creatures, while Atkinson's illustrations are bold and hint at dynamic motion. Sam is depicted as a bespectacled, dark-skinned girl with long, brown hair and wearing plaid flannel.
Brisk and bright, if a tad one-dimensional. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-809-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago.
A fairy tending their garden manages to survive a gaggle of young intruders.
In halting cadences typical of the long-running—and increasingly less amusing—How To Catch… series, the startled mite—never seen face-on in Elkerton’s candy-colored pictures and indeterminate of gender—wonders about the racially diverse interlopers: “Do they know that I can grant wishes? / Or that a new fairy is born when they giggle?” The visual action rather belies the sweetness of the verses, the palette, the bright flowers, and the multicolored resident zebras and unicorns, as after repeated, elaborately designed efforts to trap or even shoot (with a peashooter) the fairy come to naught, the laughing children are escorted out of the garden beneath a rising moon. The encounter ends on a (perhaps unconsciously) ominous note. “Hope they find their way back sometime,” the butterfly-winged narrator concludes. “And just maybe next time they’ll stay!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781728263205
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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