Make reservations elsewhere.
This hotel is for the birds! (And spiders, mice, pigs….)
Mr. Snore, a very tired musician whose face looks like one colossal nose, checks into the Sharemore Hotel one evening. Sadly, the rooming accommodations on the first floor are not up to Mr. Snore’s standards, as the bed is already occupied by a small mouse sleeping on the pillow. The bellhop, who bears a passing resemblance to Tintin, relocates Mr. Snore to the second floor, where he finds a covers-hogging hog. This pattern repeats with each floor until Mr. Snore reaches the 13th and the titular dinosaur. At this point, the joke turns, and it is the annoyed dino who requests a new room when it finds Mr. Snore snoozing on its pillow. The book ends with the exhausted dinosaur sleeping in the lobby with the bellhop. Overall, the execution is fair, if a tad bland. While the page turns reveal each new animal, the preceding images don’t give much in the way of hints as to what they will be, denying young readers a chance to develop their predictive skills. Some of the rooms’ doors are fancifully styled to match their inhabitants, but most are plain—a missed opportunity. The acrylic-and-ink illustrations are amusing enough, but the caricature of Mr. Snore and his schnoz is an odd choice. Both Mr. Snore and the bellhop are white.
Make reservations elsewhere. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8665-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sturdy split pages allow readers to create their own inventive combinations from among a handful of prehistoric critters. Hard on the heels of Flip-O-Saurus (2010) drops this companion gallery, printed on durable boards and offering opportunities to mix and match body thirds of eight prehistoric mammals, plus a fish and a bird, to create such portmanteau creatures as a “Gas-Lo-Therium,” or a “Mega-Tor-Don.” The “Mam-Nyc-Nia” places the head of a mammoth next to the wings and torso of an Icaronycteris (prehistoric bat) and the hind legs of a Macrauchenia (a llamalike creature with a short trunk), to amusing effect. Drehsen adds first-person captions on the versos, which will also mix and match to produce chuckles: “Do you like my nose? It’s actually a short trunk…” “I may remind you of an ostrich, because my wings aren’t built for flying…” “My tail looks like a dolphin’s.” With but ten layers to flip, young paleontologists will run through most of the permutations in just a few minutes, but Ball’s precisely detailed ink-and-watercolor portraits of each animal formally posed against plain cream colored backdrops may provide a slightly more enduring draw. A silhouette key on the front pastedown includes a pronunciation guide and indicates scale. Overall, a pleasing complement to more substantive treatments. (Novelty nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1099-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
Eye candy and intellectual nourishment alike for newly independent readers.
A classic informational early reader gets a substantial, long-overdue update.
Kirkus criticized the 1985 edition for conveying outdated and misleading information—chivalrously leaving the stodgy colored-pencil illustrations unmentioned. All of that has been addressed here. Revised by the late Milton’s brother Kent, the text highlights or at least names over a dozen dinos, from the diminutive Citipati to the humongous Argentinosaurus, “as big as a house, longer than three buses, and as heavy as thirteen elephants!” Prehistoric contemporaries that were not dinosaurs also get nods, as do modern paleontology, the great extinction and the continued survival of birds: “So the dinosaur days go on.” Tempesta’s cover painting of a brightly patterned Triceratops being attacked by a T. Rex with a feathery spinal fringe opens a suite of equally dramatic group and single portraits. They feature mottled monsters viewed from low angles to accentuate their massiveness and reflect current thinking about feathers and coloration.
Eye candy and intellectual nourishment alike for newly independent readers. (Informational early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: July 22, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-37923-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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