Renowned novelist Spinelli (Loser, 2002, etc.) offers a healthy dose of hero worship in his picture-book debut. From the moment he comes home from work, briefcase in hand, this Dad is ready to spend quality time with the young narrator, whether it means jumping into the parked car together for a pretend trip to Kalamazoo, playing hide and seek, wrestling on the floor, or making gingerbread men in the kitchen. Cook, barber, gardener, clown, mentor, and cheerleader; in his child’s eyes, Dad does it all—and, to judge from Chwast’s (Harry, I Need You!, not reviewed, etc.) simple, thickly brushed, all-canine domestic scenes, is a single parent to boot. Despite occasional narrative jumps that the pictures don’t bridge—“When we go for a walk, we don’t just walk—we do fancy dance steps. You’d think my dad had twenty kids!”—the intensity and directness of feeling will strike a chord in young readers or pre-readers who feel the same about their own fathers, or who are put off by the ambiguity in Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-80606-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2003
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
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