While the uneven cadence may pose a challenge for parents reading aloud to a young audience, this animal escapade should...
A lost cat, a sloth, and a cellphone combine to create a rhyming adventure in this debut picture book.
Purrball the cat looks forward to moving to Brazil with his best friend and human, Darryl. After a long flight riding at Darryl’s (smelly) feet, Purrball is eager to leave the plane. He and his caretaker ride the terminal shuttle, using Darryl’s mom’s phone to keep busy. But when they arrive at the terminal, the whole world shakes: it’s an earthquake! The terrified Purrball bolts, with the cellphone and charging cable wrapped around his leg. Soon, Purrball has no idea where he is, until he encounters a Brazilian native: a three-toed sloth. This charmingly illustrated fellow, created using primarily basic shapes but with some lovely furry details that add character, insists that Purrball not worry. Purrball, comforted, names his friend Burrball, after the burrs the cat sometimes finds stuck in his fur. When Purrball notices Burrball’s clever claws, the feline comes up with an idea: the sloth can text Darryl to come to the rescue. After a frustratingly timed battery outage and an encounter with tourists more interested in selfies with a lost cat, sloth, and cellphone, the two animals finally reach a cafe where they can plug in and wait for help to arrive. While the rhythm of the rhyming lines sometimes falters and the rhyming words don’t always move the story or scene forward (“I found myself in the middle of nowhere I knew. / I was surrounded by darkness from trees that grew”), the instant friendship between cat and sloth remains utterly enjoyable, and the integration of familiar technology should appeal to young readers used to having parents’ cellphones on hand for any boredom emergency. Zoet’s computer-designed illustrations have a lot of child appeal, with the effective use of color, delightful integration of rain-forest animals, and a wonderfully diverse human cast in the background.
While the uneven cadence may pose a challenge for parents reading aloud to a young audience, this animal escapade should elicit plenty of giggles from confident independent readers in lower elementary school.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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