Young listeners will quickly memorize the story and then focus on everything else that is happening in proximity to Nana...
It's a modern-day plague of frogs.
After a basement flood and the departure of the plumber, Nana Quimby’s kitchen is overrun with frogs, coming in larger and larger armies up the basement steps. Nana Quimby seeks advice from passing children by shouting her dilemma out her window: “Too many frogs!” Each child suggests containment. “Put the frogs in a goldfish bowl,” directs the first, and after that the children recommend in turn: cups, pots and pans, the sink, the washing machine, the bathtub. Chaos creeps in with each wave of frogs, and at last Nana Quimby is at a loss to contain the final million bumping in from the basement. The solution? Fill the basement with water. The thin tale is hardly the point, though, as it provides just the right amount of structure for a series of disarmingly funny scenes of busy children calling out advice and Nana Quimby determinedly containing frogs. Warm acrylics lend a delicious coziness to the scenes of froggy mayhem in Nana Quimby’s kitchen, and the text in Garamond looks wonderfully fey next to the odd and quirky lines of the illustrations.
Young listeners will quickly memorize the story and then focus on everything else that is happening in proximity to Nana Quimby’s latest eccentric encounter with wildlife. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: July 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-36299-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes.
Another entry in the how-much-I-love-you genre.
The opening spread shows a blue elephant-and-child pair, the child atop the adult, white hearts arcing between their uplifted trunks: “You’re a gift and a blessing in every way. / I love you more each and every day.” From there, the adult elephant goes on to tell the child how they are loved more than all sorts of things, some rhyming better than others: “I love you more than all the spaghetti served in Rome, // and more than each and every dog loves her bone.” More than stars, fireflies, “all the languages spoken in the world,” “all the dancers that have ever twirled,” all the kisses ever given and miles ever driven, “all the adventures you have ahead,” and “all the peanut butter and jelly spread on bread!” Representative of all the world’s languages are “I love you” in several languages (with no pronunciation help): English, Sioux, French, German, Swahili, Spanish, Hawaiian, Chinese, and Arabic (these two last in Roman characters only). Bold colors and simple illustrations with no distracting details keep readers’ focus on the main ideas. Dashed lines give the artwork (and at least one word on every spread) the look of 2-D sewn toys.
So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8398-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
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