Wedding elegant design with witty and funny rhymes and challenging children to play with words make this book a winner.
A book of rhyming fun for young vocabulary sophisticates.
Just from the quirky title and illustration—a winged alarm clock—on the cover, readers get a hint of the delightful rhymes to be found inside. Bold, colorful graphics, emphasized by the liberal use of black and framed with plenty of white, present an object on the right-hand page while the text on the left identifies it. The objects are mainly run-of-the-mill: “Alarm Clock,” “Fresh Orange Juice,” “Fingernails,” “Fluffy Bath Towel.” The fun starts when readers unfold the gatefold pages beneath the illustrations to discover the object transformed by a very clever rhyming counterpart. “Fresh Orange Juice” becomes “Fresh Orange Goose” (the goose pokes its head out from a glass of orange liquid), and “Fluffy Bath Towel” becomes “Fluffy Bath Owl” (a cross-looking blue owl hangs from a towel rod). Once children have caught on to the rhyming nonsense, the gatefold design will give them time to come up with their own rhymes before revealing the one in the book. Children will squirm in delight when “Cheese on Toast” becomes “Sneeze on Toast” or “Fingernails” become “Fingersnails,” and what child will not salivate at the thought of a “Spoon of Marmalade” becoming “Moon and Starmalade”? The different glimpses of a human—a face, a hand, feet—in the illustrations are of a white person.
Wedding elegant design with witty and funny rhymes and challenging children to play with words make this book a winner. (Board book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7148-7639-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Phaidon
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Only gnashnabs would cavil at this eximious display of lexicographical largesse.
More labial lollipops for logomanes and sesquipedalian proto-savants.
The creators of Big Words for Little Geniuses (2017) and Cuddly Critters for Little Geniuses (2018) follow up with another ABC of extravagant expressions. It begins with “ailurophile” (“How furry sweet!” Puns, yet), ends with “zoanthropy,” and in between highlights “bioluminescent,” growls at a grouchy “gnashnab,” and collects a “knickknackatory” of like locutions. A list of 14 additional words is appended in a second, partial alphabet. Each entry comes with a phonetic version, a one- or two-sentence verbal definition, and, from Pan, a visual one with a big letter and very simple, broadly brushed figures. Lending an ear to aural pleasures, the authors borrow from German to include “fünfundfünfzig” in the main list and add a separate list of a dozen more words at the end likewise deemed sheer fun to say. Will any of these rare, generally polysyllabic leviathans find their way into idiolects or casual conversations? Unlikely, alas—but sounding them out and realizing that even the silliest have at least putative meanings sheds liminal light on language’s glittering word hoards.
Only gnashnabs would cavil at this eximious display of lexicographical largesse. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-53445-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jimmy Patterson/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Caregivers eager to expose their children to fine art have better choices than this.
From “Apple” to “Zebra,” an alphabet of images drawn from museum paintings.
In an exhibition that recalls similar, if less parochial, ABCs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (My First ABC, 2009) and several other institutions, Hahn presents a Eurocentric selection of paintings or details to illustrate for each letter a common item or animal—all printed with reasonable clarity and captioned with identifying names, titles, and dates. She then proceeds to saddle each with an inane question (“What sounds do you think this cat is making?” “Where can you find ice?”) and a clumsily written couplet that unnecessarily repeats the artist’s name: “Flowers are plants that blossom and bloom. / Frédéric Bazille painted them filling up this room!” She also sometimes contradicts the visuals, claiming that the horses in a Franz Marc painting entitled “Two Horses, 1912” are ponies, apparently to populate the P page. Moreover, her “X” is an actual X-ray of a Jean-Honoré Fragonard, showing that the artist repainted his subject’s face…interesting but not quite in keeping with the familiar subjects chosen for the other letters.
Caregivers eager to expose their children to fine art have better choices than this. (Informational picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5107-4938-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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