While fans of the earlier titles might enjoy every bite of this one, it doesn’t jell as well as its predecessors,...
Medina presents the third in a series (ABC Pasta and 1 Big Salad, both 2016) that brings together an early-learning concept, photographed food items, doodled black lines, and a unifying setting.
Here, 12 shapes—fruits, sweets, and baked goods sourced in Medina’s Washington, D.C., environs—are embodied as forest animals. Each shape is depicted and spelled out in all-caps at the top of a page. Thick black lines turn the bright pink circle of a macaron into an owl; oval jelly beans become the bodies of butterflies. Most of the sweets’ shapes derive from the way they’re cut: there’s a square “Carmelita Deer” and a rectangular “Brownie Bear.” This conceit stretches to include a cross, cut from a Rice Krispies square, for a wolf’s face and arrows cut from pecan-pie slices standing in as chipmunks. Thick line drawings lend a coloring-book feel to the compositions, since many animals appear against white space. Typefaces selected for display and text type (Burbank big wide and Bodoni Six) compete with rather than complement each other, and digitally stylized branches, grass, and other bits add to the visual disjointedness. A recipe for chocolate-covered strawberries, requiring a double boiler, a pound of bittersweet chocolate, and an unspecified quantity of strawberries, is appended.
While fans of the earlier titles might enjoy every bite of this one, it doesn’t jell as well as its predecessors, conceptually or visually. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 24, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-99982-0
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Nothing riveting but serviceable enough.
Children are introduced to the concepts of sorting and classifying in this bedtime story.
It is getting close to bedtime, and Marco’s mother asks him to put his toys away. Marco—who thinks of himself as a scientist—corrects her: “You mean time to sort the animals.” And that’s what he proceeds to do. Marco sorts his animals into three baskets labeled “Flying Animals,” “Swimming Animals,” and “Animals That Move on Land,” but the animals will not sleep. So he sorts them by color: “Mostly Brown,” “Black and White,” and “Colors of the Rainbow,” but Zebra is upset to be separated from Giraffe. Next, Marco sorts his animals by size: “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large,” but the big animals are cramped and the small ones feel cold. Finally, Marco ranges them around his bed from biggest to smallest, thus providing them with space to move and helping them to feel safe. Everyone satisfied, they all go to sleep. While the plot is flimsy, the general idea that organizing and classifying can be accomplished in many different ways is clear. Young children are also presented with the concept that different classifications can lead to different results. The illustrations, while static, keep the focus clearly on the sorting taking place. Marco and his mother have brown skin. The backmatter includes an explanation of sorting in science and ideas for further activities.
Nothing riveting but serviceable enough. (Math picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62354-128-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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