Give that Ragweed an extra biscuit, or just hand over the whole box. A star deserves his just rewards.
A lovable farm dog named Ragweed pens a first-person guidebook that explains how to succeed on the job while earning lots of biscuit rewards.
Ragweed is so accomplished at his profession that he has written a handbook for aspiring farm dogs. He’s good at writing too, and he has clear objectives to get across to his readers. He describes the job of each farm animal, what will happen if a dog tries to do that job, and what the result in the biscuit-reward system will be. Each situation is funny in a different way, from charmingly amusing (sharing an extra biscuit with a fox) to laugh-out-loud hilarious (eating grass like cows leads to, er, a biscuit that can be eaten again). The satisfying conclusion finds Ragweed and the farmer sitting together on the porch at the end of the day, with the faithful, funny canine getting a biscuit just for being a good dog. Buoyant, fresh illustrations in acrylic paints are filled with bright green grass, flowers, fields, and farm animals in motion. But it’s Ragweed who is the heart of this delightful story, with his long snout and expressive, bulging eyes. He can’t hold himself back from getting into the territories of the other animals, but he knows how to have fun on the farm and still get what he wants while endearing himself to the farmer (and to readers).
Give that Ragweed an extra biscuit, or just hand over the whole box. A star deserves his just rewards. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7417-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
Too many bugs, figuratively.
Lucy, “the youngest member of a family of fireflies,” must overcome an irrational, moon-induced anxiety in order to leave her family tree trunk and glow.
The first six pages pull readers into a lush, beautiful world of nighttime: “When the sun has set, silence falls over the Big Forest, and all of the nighttime animals wake up.” Mixed media provide an enchanting forest background, with stylized flora and fauna eventually illuminated by a large, benign moon, because the night “doesn’t like to catch them by surprise.” Turning the page catches readers by surprise, though: the family of fireflies is decidedly comical and silly-looking. Similarly, the text moves from a lulling, magical cadence to a distinct shift in mood as the bugs ready themselves for their foray into the night: “They wave their bottoms in the air, wiggle their feelers, take a deep, deep breath, and sing, ‘Here we go, it’s time to glow!’ ” It’s an acceptable change, but more unevenness follows. Lucy’s excitement about finally joining the other bugs turns to “sobbing” two nights in a row. Instead of directly linking her behavior to understandable reactions of children to newness, the text undermines itself by making Lucy’s parents’ sweet reassurances impotent and using the grandmother’s scientific explanation of moonlight as an unnecessary metaphor. Further detracting from the story, the text becomes ever denser and more complex over the book’s short span.
Too many bugs, figuratively. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-84-16147-00-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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