A how-to manual in which a love of reading shines.
A young girl greatly wants to befriend a bear; she just needs to find one first.
Julia, a tot with a messy brown ponytail and one slouchy sock, loves to play outside. A ruddy (white) complexion and a bandaged knee confirm her nature-loving ways. While outdoors, she plays with many animal friends: hide-and-seek with Abigail the groundhog, tree-climbing with Scotty the squirrel, and, appropriately, farting contests with Frieda the skunk. But what Julia longs to do is play with a bear. A book that she is reading mentions a bear’s favorite snack: honey. She gets a large, sticky pot full of the treat and waits. But it attracts only Scotty. So then she tries a basket of blueberries. After returning from lunch, she finds large, blue paw prints and her book missing! This ursine-loving gal just may have found someone to have a “bearnormous” picnic with—and a reading buddy as well. A palette of greens and browns, with bright pops of yellow, freshens the somewhat pedestrian illustrations (although the bear’s cozy treetop library is quite enviable, and his spectacles are a nice touch).
A how-to manual in which a love of reading shines. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-2-924786-47-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: CrackBoom! Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Eye candy for dinosaur fans, with piles of yard-sale goods and other junk on hand that will reward closer looks.
The plot doesn’t exactly make sense, but that hardly matters when the pictures show a suburban neighborhood suddenly overrun with humongous dinosaurs.
His mother’s steadfast refusal to let him get a dog only breaks down after a lad visits a yard sale to buy first a huge egg that hatches into a rambunctious baby triceratops and then a “dinosaur horn” that brings a towering T. Rex and more dinos thundering out of the trees. In some of his most finished, sharply detailed illustrations ever, Mayer shows casually dressed human figures and massive, exuberant prehistoric ones—all bearing comically exaggerated expressions—chasing one another through yards and down streets until the lad blows his horn again and the surprised-looking dinos fade away. Cut to a final scene in the pet shop, where boy and wriggly puppy bond as Mom takes her abrupt about face with good grace. The first-person narration runs to just a line or so per page, but it might as well not be there at all, so expressive are the illustrations.
Eye candy for dinosaur fans, with piles of yard-sale goods and other junk on hand that will reward closer looks. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2316-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
Presented in a mix of sequential panels and full-spread views, this easy-to-follow debut tale is rich in both drama and...
In this wordless odyssey, a postprandial nighttime outing turns particularly adventurous for two animal buddies.
With his mouse friend in the front basket, a frog's bike ride down a moonlit country road leads to startling encounters with a fierce-looking but friendly cockatrice, a computer gamer that looks like a bat crossed with a human and, just off a nearby beach, a menacing giant white crab. These creatures are only representative, though, of the many exotic and fantasy animals that Furie strews about each grainy-surfaced scene as he leads his two explorers past open woods, into twisting tunnels underground and through a deserted town decorated with gargoyles on the way to the sea. Surfing back to shore atop a pair of dolphins, the frog and mouse conclude their journey by climbing to a headland to watch a bright sunrise. A foldout poster of the cast (and cockatrice) serves as dust jacket.
Presented in a mix of sequential panels and full-spread views, this easy-to-follow debut tale is rich in both drama and sights that are less dangerous-looking than delightfully strange. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-56-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: McSweeney's McMullens
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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