Sweet and heartwarming.
When an old rabbit needs help tending her garden, a young bunny and his family step up.
Mrs. Elsie’s once lush and beautiful paradise is now an overgrown mess. When Davy discovers the elderly rabbit trying to lug home a watering can for her garden, he offers to fetch her some water from the stream. Seeing how much help she needs, Davy calls in his family as reinforcements. All summer long, they lend a hand, caring for her garden haven. With some quick thinking, Davy and his siblings save her garden when the stream floods, and Mrs. Elsie celebrates their kindness with a community-wide harvest party. The message in this Swiss import, translated from German, is simple and straightforward: It pays to take care of one another, and there’s value in sharing one’s abundance. Weninger's lengthy text makes the tale most appropriate for older preschoolers and early elementary schoolers. Tharlet’s illustrations do much of the storytelling, with the rabbits’ expressive faces showing nuanced emotions, from tired hopelessness to anxiety to growing excitement. Soft colors and rustic elements give the narrative a timeless, classic feel. Though Weninger and Tharlet tread familiar ground, they provide a deep sense of comfort and familiarity that will draw in readers.
Sweet and heartwarming. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780735845961
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
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
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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