Sweet, uneven, and slight
A dog finds a friend in an unlikely place. Can a dog and a whale be friends?
This dog likes the ocean, swimming, sailing his boat, and bobbing with the jellyfish. His dog friends like to jam and make music—but not to swim. One day he meets a whale. Though they share a love of the ocean, it’s not easy to be friends when he’s up and she’s down, and he can’t hold his breath. Back on land, he dreams, he draws, and he has an idea. He’s going to learn to scuba dive. He studies, he practices, he passes the test, and he gets his gear. Then it’s off to play with his friend. But not for long, as the whale needs to find food. While she’s gone, the dog prepares a hello surprise. He teaches his fellow dogs the whale’s song and makes a seaweed garland. After what seems like a very long wait, the whale eventually returns. Only it looks like she was gone for much more than food, as she returns with a baby! This uneven friendship story unfolds in short, choppy sentences that play mildly with internal rhyme and rhythm. Golden’s playful mixed-media illustrations (watercolors, pastels, and colored pencil) use a soft color palette nicely in tune with the story. Readers can’t help wondering, though, at what feels like a real imbalance in the protagonists’ friendship.
Sweet, uneven, and slight . (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: May 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0143-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the...
In this deceptively spare, very beginning reader, a girl assembles a robot and then treats it like a slave until it goes on strike.
Having put the robot together from a jumble of loose parts, the budding engineer issues an increasingly peremptory series of rhymed orders— “Throw, Bot. / Row, Bot”—that turn from playful activities like chasing bubbles in the yard to tasks like hoeing the garden, mowing the lawn and towing her around in a wagon. Jung crafts a robot with riveted edges, big googly eyes and a smile that turns down in stages to a scowl as the work is piled on. At last, the exhausted robot plops itself down, then in response to its tormentor’s angry “Don’t say no, Bot!” stomps off in a huff. In one to four spacious, sequential panels per spread, Jung develops both the plotline and the emotional conflict using smoothly modeled cartoon figures against monochromatic or minimally detailed backgrounds. The child’s commands, confined in small dialogue balloons, are rhymed until her repentant “Come on home, Bot” breaks the pattern but leads to a more equitable division of labor at the end.
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the rest. (Easy reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87083-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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