Not only is Baby Bear’s loss of fear too sudden to be believable, the art pays no mind to his inner emotional landscape and...
Mixed messages and a main character who comes off as less a frightened youngster than a self-absorbed twit spoil Pearson’s debut.
The fault lies chiefly (but not wholly) with the illustrations. Scared by noises in the nighttime woods, Baby Bear slips out of his den. He climbs a tall tree, rips down the starry sky like a curtain and proceeds to eat it. He callously brushes off the protests of a field mouse, a firefly and a bat in his determination to eradicate the night. He loses his fear of the dark when his mother appeals to self-interest by explaining that the dark helps bears survive, too. Despite being capable of pulling down the sky, he is portrayed by Leick not as a powerful figure or, considering his motives, even an anxious one, but as a chubby-cheeked teddy bear who exudes smug self-satisfaction as he continues to chew away despite the pleas of other creatures. Ultimately Baby Bear belches out the sky in what would be a comical climax were it not depicted as a few almost unnoticeable gassy wisps issuing from his mouth and disappearing into the page’s gutter.
Not only is Baby Bear’s loss of fear too sudden to be believable, the art pays no mind to his inner emotional landscape and turns what is essentially a tale of mythic proportions into a cozy bit of feel-good ephemera. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6103-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
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 first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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