Vivid collages combined with sprightly verse offer readers a glimpse into the fascinating world of the deep. Rose (The People Who Hugged the Trees, 1994) celebrates the bounty of the sea, providing an alphabetic exploration of the ocean’s diverse inhabitants. Brief rhymes highlight each creature’s unique attributes, from shimmering Queen angelfish to the ponderous pace of the Manatees. The succinct verses move at a lulling pace, evocative of the gentle rhythms of the sea. “. . . where Kelp forests sway / and Leopard sharks prey / where Manatees lumber / and Narwhals slumber . . .” From Anemones to Zooplankton, the verses focus on animals whose names begin each successive letter in the alphabet. For a basic introduction to the alphabet, the book’s format is a bit weak, as the featured letters are highlighted solely within the verse via capitalization and the text lacks any formalized representation of the alphabet in its entirety. However, older children already familiar with their ABC’s will enjoy the challenge of identifying the animals alphabetically while the artwork provides a luminous introduction to marine life. Jenkins’s full-bleed and full-color illustrations gloriously capture the grace and beauty of the ocean’s populace. Detailed, textured collages, made with layers of cut-paper, lend a nearly three-dimensional feel to the illustrations while Jenkins’s use of colors, from bright indigos to soft teals, artfully reflect the ever-changing hues of the sea. A glossary at the back provides further information on the individual animal’s habits and habitats. An informative, picturesque tour of the sea that readers can embark upon without ever getting their toes wet. (Picture book. 3-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-439-09696-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2000
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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
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