A friendship tale that deserves to leap immediately to the beginning-reader classics shelf.
Cherished headgear spurs adventure for a pair of elephants.
Olive gifts Oscar a hat. A tan number with a black band, it immediately earns the titular description. As two friends take a trip to the beach (cut short by rain), head to the grocery store, and bake a cake, the hat reveals surprising new functions. It serves as beachwear, but it’s also an impromptu shovel, umbrella, and grocery sack. Then it falls into the cake batter! Olive, whose confident suggestions haven’t faltered all day, now announces calmly that the hat can be washed. It can’t, and Oscar sadly sports the warped-looking cap. But Oscar recognizes that a day with Olive is better even than a favorite hat. And the pals share the splendid cake. Rosenthal’s depictions of the pachyderms and their surroundings are simple and firmly outlined. Olive is stylish in a pink polka-dot dress and a two-piece bathing suit; Oscar wears bright shorts and T-shirts. Olive’s large-type, serif-text dialogue is foregrounded in peach, Oscar’s in orange. Bernstein wrings maximum meaning out of a strict economy of text, resulting in a tale simple enough for youngsters to read independently but still satisfying. In few words, each friend is deftly characterized: Oscar is a bit slow on the uptake (asking where the hat is while wearing it) but at the end turns out to be perceptive and sweet. Olive is supportive and managerial.
A friendship tale that deserves to leap immediately to the beginning-reader classics shelf. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781665975094
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon Spotlight
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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