An adequate color and flowers concept book with an exuberant cast of characters.
Using six baby penguins covered in paint, Aspinall introduces colors and flowers in this bright-eyed book.
With babies named Tulip, Tiger Lily, Dandelion, Violet, Bluebell, and Broccoli, Mama Penguin must love flowers. (A note on the copyright page clarifies that broccoli is indeed a flower.) Her six wide-eyed, black-and-white baby penguins are indistinguishable except for their berets, each representing the color of its flowery name. Tulip wears a red beret, Tiger Lily’s is orange, and so on. With the energy and good intentions of youngsters on a special day, the clan decides to surprise Mama with a gift. “Let’s use our paints and make the most colorful picture we can!” Aspinall then zooms in close to bold, double-paged spreads of each penguin and the rich color it is using. Six baby penguins in rainbow colors is a beautiful sight. However, the storyline is easily anticipated, with painting, messy babies, and a bath. The concept of color mixing is absent, which seems impossible with little ones. The focus instead turns to the flowers, showing each bloom labeled and silhouetted in one single color. Mama Penguin, bundling her rainbow babies to her, exults, “I love flowers, and I love colors, but not as much as I love… / …my six little penguins.”
An adequate color and flowers concept book with an exuberant cast of characters. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-545-87654-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet reminder that it’s easy to weather a storm with the company and kindness of friends.
Is it a stormy-night scare or a bedtime book? Both!
Little Blue Truck and his good friend Toad are heading home when a storm lets loose. Before long, their familiar, now very nervous barnyard friends (Goat, Hen, Goose, Cow, Duck, and Pig) squeeze into the garage. Blue explains that “clouds bump and tumble in the sky, / but here inside we’re warm and dry, / and all the thirsty plants below / will get a drink to help them grow!” The friends begin to relax. “Duck said, loud as he could quack it, / ‘THUNDER’S JUST A NOISY RACKET!’ ” In the quiet after the storm, the barnyard friends are sleepy, but the garage is not their home. “ ‘Beep!’ said Blue. ‘Just hop inside. / All aboard for the bedtime ride!’ ” Young readers will settle down for their own bedtimes as Blue and Toad drop each friend at home and bid them a good night before returning to the garage and their own beds. “Blue gave one small sleepy ‘Beep.’ / Then Little Blue Truck fell fast asleep.” Joseph’s rich nighttime-blue illustrations (done “in the style of [series co-creator] Jill McElmurry”) highlight the power of the storm and capture the still serenity that follows. Little Blue Truck has been chugging along since 2008, but there seems to be plenty of gas left in the tank.
A sweet reminder that it’s easy to weather a storm with the company and kindness of friends. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-85213-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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