A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word.
Art-loving Louise and her little brother, Art, cook up creative treats for the first-grade bake sale in this early-reader offering.
Throughout the book, which features a first-person text with controlled vocabulary, an unmentioned black cat accompanies bespectacled Louise and her robot-costumed brother, adding visual interest to the pictures. The opening spreads depict Louise with Art as she expresses her love for art of all kinds. “I see art in everything!” she exclaims while reading a baking cookbook. The next page depicts a notice on the refrigerator for contributions to a bake sale to fund a field trip. The children, who are both depicted as white with light skin, set out to bake and decorate “a rainbow of cupcakes.” They start with primary colors for the frosting and then mix them together for more options, but the process goes awry when Art combines too many colors and they end up with big bowls of gray frosting. “At least they taste good, even if they don’t look like art,” Louise generously states. Her eureka moment arrives when she repeats the phrase “Look like Art,” and a first-person visual perspective shows her comparing the gray-frosted cupcakes with the gray-helmeted Art. Inspired, Louise adds confectionary embellishments to the cupcakes, which make them look like little robots, too, and the “ROBO CAKES” are a hit at the bake sale.
A sweet sibling outing, in both senses of the word. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-236366-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be...
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip.
The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface.
Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel.
In this Japanese import, the first in a long-running series to appear in English, two girls ride bikes through a forest—with stops for clover-blossom tea and jam sandwiches.
It’s such a benign wood that Chirri and Chirra—depicted as a prim pair of identical twins with straight bob cuts—think nothing of sharing both a lunch spot and a nap beneath a tree with a bear and a rabbit. Moreover, at convenient spots along the way there is a forest cafe with a fox waiter plus “tables and chairs of all different size” to accommodate the diverse forest clientele, a bakery offering “bread in all different shapes and jam in all different colors,” and, just as the sun goes down, a forest hotel with similarly diverse keys and doors. That night a forest concert draws the girls and the hotel’s animal guests to their balconies to join in: “La-la-la, La-la-la. What a wonderful night in the forest!” Despite heavy doses of cute, the episode is saved from utter sappiness by the inclusive spirit of the forest stops and the delightfully unforced way that the girls offer greetings to a pair of honeybees at a tiny adjacent table in the cafe, show no anxiety at the spider dangling above their napping place, and generally accept their harmonious sylvan world as a safe and friendly place. Doi creates her illustrations with colored pencil, pastel, and crayon, crafting them to look like mid-20th-century lithographs.
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59270-199-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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