A young fellow going down the road and running into a succession of sillies is a common folklore theme, but this isn't just another variation. In a few words Lobel's grasshopper hero is given not only common sense but an engaging, open attitude as well, and the creatures he encounters are not interchangeable comic numbskulls but representatives of different, familiar foibles. Among them are a group of beetles who form a club to celebrate morning, but won't tolerate a member who also enjoys afternoon and evening; a broom-wielding housefly who started by sweeping a speck on the rug and is determined not to stop "until the whole world is clean clean clean"; and a mosquito who is such a stickler for rules that he insists on Grasshopper crossing the lake in his boat, though his prospective passenger can easily jump across and doesn't fit in the boat. Later three butterflies, creatures of habit, wish to include visits with Grasshopper in their ludicrously rigid daily routine, but he answers: "I will be moving on. I will be doing new things." And when his pace is scorned by two dragonflies so intent on zipping speedily onward that they haven't time to view the scenery: "He was happy to be walking slowly down the road." You can trust Lobel to provide beginning readers with just a little more thought food than meets the eye—while just as gently pleasing the eye with his soft-toned, harmonious illustrations.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 1978
ISBN: 006444094X
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1978
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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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