Digs a little below the surface of most child-animal friendship books to explore deeper emotions.
A child wants to comfort an elephant friend but doesn’t know how.
Wandering around a woodsy setting, the brown-skinned youngster, in yellow hoodie and red pants, knows that the pachyderm is unhappy. What to do? Writing in second person, in rhyming couplets, an unseen narrator offers practical advice: “Do something silly to make him laugh? / Give him a scented bubble bath?” When these actions, pictured amusingly in soft gouache, pencil, and cut paper multimedia illustrations, don’t make things better, the text shifts in tone: “Your friend may want to take a walk. / You can be quiet together… / or he might want to talk… // and talk… // and talk.” With each page turn, colorful shapes explode from the elephant’s mouth, growing wilder and more frenzied. He takes on more human features as he expresses his anger. The elephant looks exhausted, and the narrator tells us, “He might have many troubles to tell. / Don’t interrupt. Just listen well.” The next page includes three vignettes depicting the elephant’s intense feelings, his gray body suffused in hues of blue, red, and yellow as he sobs, stomps his feet, and throws himself to the ground, yelling—a scene that stands out for its visual impact. Supporting social-emotional learning, this candidly reassuring book can be effectively used with young children in classrooms, libraries, and at home to encourage discussions about friendship, sadness, and sensitivity.
Digs a little below the surface of most child-animal friendship books to explore deeper emotions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781665910248
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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