Goldilocks hits the big city in this nuanced take on the old favorite. While the text echoes the traditional tale, Browne adds his own sly humor and presents strikingly different realms of experience in two intertwined, visually distinct narratives. In Baby Bear’s luminous world, a bad day is a bowl of too-hot cereal. The rather smug, sweater-wearing bear family in soft pastels on their porridge-cooling constitutional (“Daddy talked about his work. Mommy talked about her work. I just messed around”) contrasts starkly with Goldilocks’s sepia-toned world of fear and uncertainty that unfolds simultaneously, wordlessly, in sequential panels. Goldilocks, who gets separated from her mother in the sinister, graffiti-ridden city streets, takes refuge in the bear family’s yellow house (color appears when she moves into comfort) and plays out her infamous porridge-chair-bed–testing routine. When the interspecies worlds collide (and the angry-eyed bears go sepia), the girl flees, eventually running into her mother’s arms, both now awash in yellow. Clever, thought-provoking and unsettling. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-374-34908-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Funny and thought provoking.
The hidden history of one of the world’s most popular pieces of furniture.
An anthropomorphized fox in a purple jacket and green pants stands on a stage, showcasing various kinds of sofas and what they’re used for: eating, sleeping, dance parties, and sliding down pillows. Just as the fox is about to provide a demonstration of that last activity, complete with a drawing, an opossum in a gray pinstriped suit emerges: “You can’t show that to children! Someone could break their neck!” Using a tape dispenser–like machine, the opossum covers up the offending image with a black censor bar. The fox continues to expose “truths” about couches: Some of them grow on farms (“Where do you think we got the term couch potato?”); they have an insatiable hunger, which leads to objects disappearing among the cushions; and some are actually aliens in disguise. The opossum is skeptical, but when a chaotic parade of couches enter the scene to prove the fox right, the opossum is forced to reconsider. This is a hilarious send-up of conspiracy theories and adults’ attempts to shelter children from the real world. Depicting elegantly attired creatures, Liniers’ muted artwork contrasts humorously with the surreal scenarios depicted. The dialogue between the fox and opossum is entertaining, but grown-ups might want to pre-read before read-alouds to avoid tripping over some phrasing (e.g., “secret elite couch enforcement squadron”).
Funny and thought provoking. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593619131
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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
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