It’s a whale of a fun ride! (Picture book. 4-7)
If the line is long, there’s bound to be something good at the end, right?
The tale starts opposite the title page with a small frog, marked #50, looking up at a sign that requests “Please line up in single file.” Turn the page, and animals #49, lizard, through #37, porcupine, stand politely, clearly wondering what’s at the front of the line. As the numbers decrease, the size of the animals increases: #4 is hippo. Turn the page after #1, elephant, to a gatefold sign: JUMBO COASTER. Open the gatefold, and all of the animals are revealed standing in order on top of a whale as it performs a series of jumps and somersaults in and out of the water! Their ride ends just like a more conventional carnival ride, with various reactions: #3, the rhino, declares, “I’m getting back in line!” Humorous comments add to the fun throughout. The armadillo, #39, stuck behind the skunk, #38, complains, “It stinks!” The kangaroo, #19, has a baby in her pouch that cries, “Are we there yet?” Totally engaging, the book offers multiple forms of participation: the word chain game that #17, the panda, starts; counting; guessing which animal belongs to the tail that appears at the edge of the page on the right (revealed seamlessly with a page turn); size concept; good old anticipation.
It’s a whale of a fun ride! (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-926973-92-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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