"On a teeny little farm, in an itty-bitty coop, a very small hen laid a big, humongous egg"—and, of course, out of that egg hatches a big, humongous chick. He is so big (he looks like a giant yellow pear with a yellow bowl cut looming over the other barnyard fowl) none of the other chickens knows quite what he is. "It's an elephant!" surmises the dimwitted smallest chicken. When an acorn falls and bonks her on the head, she begins the whole sky-is-falling shtick. Chicken Big reassures the panicking chickens—"It's only an acorn. They're actually quite tasty"—and is promptly relabeled a squirrel. Graves rings the changes on the atmospheric woes that might confuse a chicken, causing Chicken Big to go through numerous incarnations: Next he's an umbrella, then a sweater ("This is getting ridiculous," he thinks). The illustrations maximize the goof factor inherent in Chicken Big’s babyish colossalness next to the tiny adult chickens, and they incorporate speech bubbles and some sequential panels to advance the foolery. For all kids who know they are really smarter than the grown-ups. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8118-7237-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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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