The art pops—and pops up.
Insect friends find ways of coping with each other’s differences.
As with Llenas’ The Color Monster (2018), the magnificent art will prove a stronger draw than the sketchy storyline. Ralph is a “roly-poly” with a hard shell, a gift for camouflage, and a preference for being in charge. Rita is a firefly—quick, flashy, and extroverted. At first such differences don’t matter, but in time they prove irritating enough to lead to a brief falling-out. With the willingness to make a few accommodations, though, the two find their relationship strong enough to survive and flower into, at the end, a closing smooch. Gatefolds, inset booklets, immense multilayered pop-ups that seem to burst up as they open, and pull tabs that create big, broad movements enhance illustrations created from layers and assemblages of large and small cut-paper bits, all further energized with transparent colors and added scribbly lines. Though Ralph and Rita have buglike attributes, they look like humans (both white) in costumes. Younger audiences will likely pay more attention to the tabs and pop-ups than the theme, but both pals are drawn with large, expressive faces that make it easy to track the ins and outs of their close, if occasionally stressed, relationship.
The art pops—and pops up. (Pop-up picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3950-4
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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