It’s hard to sympathize with anyone here. (Picture book. 3-7)
Take a bunny, put it in its second favorite thing—a magic top hat—and you get what is known as a population explosion.
Mole and his friend, the Lumpy-Bumpy Thing (a crocodile), like to label things. Honeysuckle, woodpecker, slimy/snail (two labels)—but they meet their match when they come across something entirely new: a “snow bunny.” As the two start sticking labels on the white bunny—cute, floppy—the bunny takes off. The Lumpy-Bumpy Thing returns with both the bunny and a top hat labeled: “Warning! Do not touch!” When the Lumpy-Bumpy Thing doffs the hat, out pops a bunny—and another, and another. Not just a fluffle emerges, but, as Mole notes when he tries to label each new one, “a big problem.” The bunnies invade Mole’s garden, and a tug of war ensues over a carrot. The carrot goes flying right into the top hat, and the bunny jumps in after. Aha! Mole and pal toss in more carrots, and more bunnies follow. When they have all returned to the hat, Mole and the Lumpy-Bumpy Thing bring it back to wherever such hats come from. Then the crocodile notices something: a magic wand with a label, “Warning! Do not touch!” Once bitten, twice not the least bit shy. Despite Warnes’ moderately enjoyable, Looney Tunes–y artwork, the story is a muddle. Responsibility for meddling with the off-limits hat is never acknowledged, sharing the garden bounty with the fluffle is never considered, learning from mistakes is skated over, squashing and scaring the bunnies is actively pursued. Poor wabbits.
It’s hard to sympathize with anyone here. (Picture book. 3-7) (Picture book3-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68010-013-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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