A lighthearted frolic with lively illustrations—Scruff peeing on the tree that holds his “Wanted” sign is bound to be a...
Scruff, dog extraordinaire, leads a diverse group of dog friends on an investigation to determine who stole the sausages from the butcher’s shop.
Scruff’s favorite thing in the world is sausages (author/illustrator Zommer treats readers to a visual variety of sausages—100 of them—right off the bat in the endpapers), and he likes to stop outside the butcher’s shop daily to ogle the sausages hanging in its window. One fateful day the sausages are missing—stolen. Scruff, suspected by the mayor, the police chief, and the butcher of stealing them (with the “Wanted” signs to show it), is determined to prove his innocence by finding the thief. The simple plot shows how Scruff sniffs out the real thief, after which he and his friends our rewarded by his erstwhile accusers—with a meal of sausages, of course. The story’s real zing comes from its collagelike, digitally created illustrations. Lively and almost slapdash in their presentation, they amplify and complement the narrative urgency Scruff feels to catch the thief. Zommer omits or obscures the faces and heads of the humans in the story, but their hands are light-skinned. A cat that skulks in the illustrations throughout adds a weak ending twist.
A lighthearted frolic with lively illustrations—Scruff peeing on the tree that holds his “Wanted” sign is bound to be a reader favorite. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9297-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Templar/Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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
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