This inventive pairing of colors with musical riffs offers almost unlimited opportunities for visual and aural experimentation—plus jigsaw puzzles for more structured entertainment.
Each of the four colors are introduced individually with their musical themes, first by blank screens to draw on and then stylized, big-eared animals whose parts can be moved about with a fingertip or left to separate in a tilt-sensitive drift. On following screens, the color fields and the figures appear in combinations that can be reordered or rearranged to create both color changes and musical juxtapositions or even, with rhythmic tapping, multilayered arpeggios. The title screen’s “Play” option leads to three jigsaws and an unusual kaleidoscopic puzzle that all use the same set of shapes and colors in fresh compositions. Comical grunts, drawing lines that transform into flights of butterflies and other small flourishes enhance the artfully designed interaction. There is no narration or text, but children will find that in addition to drawing and playing with colors, they can create a story that ends with enormously satisfying chortles.
A rewarding alternative for children who find the digital edition of Hervé Tullet’s Press Here (2012) too relentlessly inscrutable. (iPad play app. 4-8)Pub Date: March 22, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: WARE'S ME
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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A book that will make young dog-owners smile in recognition and confirm dogless readers' worst suspicions about the mayhem caused by pets, even winsome ones. Sam, who bears passing resemblance to an affable golden retriever, is praised for fetching the family newspaper, and goes on to fetch every other newspaper on the block. In the next story, only the children love Sam's swimming; he is yelled at by lifeguards and fishermen alike when he splashes through every watering hole he can find. Finally, there is woe to the entire family when Sam is bored and lonely for one long night. Boland has an essential message, captured in both both story and illustrations of this Easy-to-Read: Kids and dogs belong together, especially when it's a fun-loving canine like Sam. An appealing tale. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8037-1530-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A color-themed vision of what school should be like.
In what amounts to a rehash of The World Needs More Purple People (2020), Bell and Hart address adult as well as young readers to explain what “curious and kind you” can do to make school, or for that matter the universe, a better place. Again culminating in the vague but familiar “JUST. BE. YOU!” the program remains much the same—including asking questions both “universe-sized” (“Could you make a burrito larger than a garbage truck?”) and “smaller, people-sized” (i.e., personal), working hard to learn and make things, offering praise and encouragement, speaking up and out, laughing together, and listening to others. In the illustrations, light-skinned, blond-haired narrator Penny poses amid a busy, open-mouthed, diverse cast that includes a child wearing a hijab and one who uses a wheelchair. Wiseman opts to show fewer grown-ups here, but the children are the same as in the earlier book, and a scene showing two figures blowing chocolate milk out of their noses essentially recycles a visual joke from the previous outing. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The message is worthy, but this phoned-in follow-up doesn’t add anything significant. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: June 21, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-43490-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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