Would-be animal trainers will find this engaging addition to the working-dog shelf of particular interest.
Dogs can handle all sorts of jobs, but even so, Mack’s line of work is most unusual.
Being chief apiary inspector for the Maryland Department of Agriculture, Cybil Preston is charged with certifying that commercial colonies of honeybees are free of the infectious disease called “foulbrood.” Visual checks are one way to do that, but because the job would go far more quickly with help from a dog trained to sniff out the malady’s distinctive smell, Mack comes into her life. This true story is partly a heartwarming tale of a lonely pooch finding a home, but, a professional animal trainer herself, Gibeault also lays out in loving, precise detail the systematic series of humane challenges and rewards that turned a rowdy, distractable dog who at first wouldn’t even sit on command into a dependable and responsive worker. A yellow Lab whose big personality shines in Hohn’s illustrations, Mack will easily win readers over as he passes each test and gets to work, then goes on with the light-skinned Cybil to earn a public service award and even enjoys a fling with media stardom. Following a final turn proudly trotting past piled-up beehives, Mack poses in backmatter snapshots using his expert sniffer and working alongside his own successor.
Would-be animal trainers will find this engaging addition to the working-dog shelf of particular interest. (afterword, bibliography) (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9781534113329
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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