Marching—dancing, rather—to the beat of a different drummer, Fritz whirls and twirls away from his mocking fellow goats in search of a herd that respects terpsichoreans. Along the way he picks up Liesl, a sheep who’s been booted from her flock for yodeling (“YODEL-LAY-HEEEEEEEEEEEE-EWE!”), and Gerhard the dog, similarly exiled for playing the glockenspiel. Long illustrates this distant cousin to “The Bremen Town Musicians” in bright, Bill Peet–style cartoons, depicting the three pop-eyed fellow travelers trotting up and down grassy sunlit hills with purple mountains in the near background. When Fritz at length loses heart (“Will I ever find my herd? Am I destined to dance alone?”), his companions twirl loyally into the breach, dancing his dance and making such a “ruckus on the buttercuppy hills” that Fritz’s heart “fandangoed with joy.” Since Fritz’s capering includes lots of leaps, it looks more like ballet than traditional fandango, but no matter—the trio’s quest should be a short one, considering all the performing livestock already on library shelves, and the theme of unity-in-diversity is brought home with a light touch. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-545-07554-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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