The first in the News Hounds geography series opens with chatty instructions from Axelrod (Pigs on the Ball, 1998, etc.) on how to read the book—first for fun, and then for education. Instructions, and the need to instruct, may be the book’s main flaw. The book earnestly assures parents and teachers that the series has been designed around five fundamental themes set forth by the National Council of Geography Education and the Association of American Geographers. Any readers still left in the room can then begin the story, involving press coverage of a hot-air balloon race in Texas by a roving three-person TV news team, all of them dogs. Gear packed, the reporters hop into the news van, which is driven by the weather girl, a golden retriever with long, silky ears, who in a nifty bit of sexist characterization stops to shop. They get to the airfield in time to shoot opening footage and anchorman Isaac reels off copy that will tax beginning readers. There is more, but this kind of book may put readers off geography permanently. (Picture book. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82409-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The team behind Autumn (1997) turns russet in for a spring-green coat in this paean that moves from April to June. Once again, the first letters of each line make a word that is the subject of the poem, e.g., “Green leaves overhead, a/Rug of green underfoot,/And the air between/Sweet with the green/Smell of spring” for GRASS. That page is a particularly fine microcosm of the book; the delicate poem, direct and detailed, appears on a page where the strong line of linoleum-cut illustration brings into relief a field of green seen from above, where the bold shapes of a girl and her dog lay on their backs to gaze up at the new leaves. There are longer words, too, such as “quintuplets,” delighting in five new kittens. Many of the images are rural: frogs, cows, a baseball game ringed by a field of corn. Others—hopscotch, welcoming a new baby, and watching the light fade to purple fire—will be familiar and comfortable to children everywhere. A playful refabrication of spring, likely to please as a word game, certain to please for its images. (Picture book. 3-9)
Pub Date: March 22, 1999
ISBN: 0-395-82269-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
family’s lucky / that I didn’t want a cow!" (Picture book. 3-6)
A moderately silly counting book, with slick, cartoony, computer-influenced illustrations opposite each page of short rhymed
text. A girl in overalls buys a chick at the General Store, the kind of shop with ribbons and paint, a barrel of pickles and hams hung from the ceiling. Her older sister, charmed by the black chicks, buys two more, and her father, taken by the striped ones, buys three, and so on through her family, until over 50 baby chickens come home to roost. "There were chickens in the kitchen . . . / . . . There were chickens in my bed!" The pigtailed heroine who started it all ends by noting, puckishly, "I guess my
family’s lucky / that I didn’t want a cow!" (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-800-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
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