In a cumulative text in the form of The House That Jack Built, Fredericks (The Wonder of Elephants, not reviewed, etc.) has created a story about the creatures found under a rock: “A village of animals with special features.” Earthworms, ants, spiders, beetles, field crickets, slugs, and a millipede call this rock home, and the author presents each with one unique characteristic in a rhyming couplet: “Some tiny field crickets who sing with their feet / Search near the rock for some seeds they can eat.” The field notes at the back will whet the appetite of budding entomologists, but do not give a substantial amount of information, nor answer questions that may be raised in the reading. For example, although all the insects live in one habitat and the author presents them as “friends” and “neighbors,” one would think that at least the spider and the beetle would eat the others. DiRubbio’s (How Shellmakers Build Their Amazing Homes, not reviewed, etc.) illustrations are brightly colored and done from the perspective of an insect—blades of grass are as tall as the page, the rock appears to be a mountain. But overall it’s nothing special and should be skipped. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-58469-028-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: DAW/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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
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