For preschoolers who enjoy language play, this opens up whole new opportunities for communication. (Picture book. 2-5)
A small boy wonders and speculates what animals might mean by their traditional sounds.
The stylized animals shown using megaphones and paper-cup telephones on the cover reappear inside fully clothed, behaving in familiar human ways and using a wide variety of communications devices. A lion cub roars for more toys in the bathtub. A duckling quacks for a snack in front of an open refrigerator. A small snake hisses for a kiss from her mother. Simple rhyming couplets and a repeating chorus, “They say what they say / in their own silly way, / when they say what they say / with their sounds every day” carry the narrative, which concludes with the child’s “I do love you so!” to his mother. Full-bleed, double-page, digitally rendered illustrations in slightly muted retro colors use a flattened perspective to show a variety of parent/child interactions. These offer some imaginative activities, such as identifying cloud shapes and making hay angels, and include a range of settings. Perceptive observers will notice humorous details: a baby lamb with a pacifier, a bird birthday party with a cat piñata, an old-fashioned stand telephone in a booth.
For preschoolers who enjoy language play, this opens up whole new opportunities for communication. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4169-8694-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original...
A sweetened, condensed version of the best-selling picture book, The Kissing Hand.
As in the original, Chester Raccoon is nervous about attending Owl’s night school (raccoons are nocturnal). His mom kisses him on the paw and reminds him, “With a Kissing Hand… / We’ll never be apart.” The text boils the story down to its key elements, causing this version to feel rushed. Gone is the list of fun things Chester will get to do at school. Fans of the original may be disappointed that this board edition uses a different illustrator. Gibson’s work is equally sentimental, but her renderings are stiff and flat in comparison to the watercolors of Harper and Leak. Very young readers will probably not understand that Owl’s tree, filled with opossums, a squirrel, a chipmunk and others, is supposed to be a school.
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original shouldn’t look to this version as replacement for their page-worn copies. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-933718-77-4
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Tanglewood Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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