Somewhat inconsistent, but when highlighting a single color, sunny as yellow.
A bright and breezy appreciation of yellow (and other colors too).
“Yellow is my favorite color,” declares a girl holding generous bunches of yellow balloons. Over the next few spreads, rhymes sneak in and rhythm builds. “I like red too, / and also blue.” “Red” is enormous rose bouquets and a rose crown; “blue” shows the girl swimming in an ocean. Scansion varies, sometimes an infectious Seuss-ian patter (“Which color do you love the most? / Which color could you eat on toast?”), until rhyme vanishes again near the end. The most engaging of these cheerfully simple watercolor illustrations highlight just one color, such as when the girl, green-clad, swings through a landscape of green trees and grasses. Her jubilant, blocky profile and open-mouthed grin make her exuberance easy to share. Two middle spreads have little to offer (a dull field of flowers; some leaping frogs). When a multiethnic group of playmates joins the white protagonist, two unsettling details appear. While pink and brown people have eyes drawn in simple dots or dots surrounded by whites, one girl’s eyes are a single line each—a reductive shortcut connoting “Asian” that makes those eyes look inappropriately closed. Another girl’s skin is plain black watercolor; lacking any brown or warm undertones, she seems ghoulish alongside the others.
Somewhat inconsistent, but when highlighting a single color, sunny as yellow. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-9299-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2013
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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