Mixing the melodies of hip-hop with the antics of preadolescence makes this colorful picture book a charming read for young...
In this character debut from U.K. rapper Doc Brown (writing as Smith), readers meet the scrappy, edgy Bear, who moves about the day with slick rhymes and even slicker pranks.
The book could be described as a meeting between the venerable goofiness of Yogi Bear and the encircling kitsch of the early 2000s Hip Hop Harry. Readers first see a bare, pink-skinned Bear who dons a purple suit and assumes a B-Boy stance. The narration reads like an early, toddler-friendly, playful version of hip-hop: “In my tummy? / Mostly honey. // Here’s a thingy / I find funny….” In the accompanying illustrations, Bear is pictured eating honeycomb in a beekeeper’s veil, muzzle and paws a sticky mess, then pointing up at leafy branches before playing a knock-knock joke on a red squirrel. (Well, Bear finds it funny, anyway.) Later on, Bear uses a wand to catch salmon and does a disappearing act, boasting, “I do magic. / Most bears won’t. // Now you see me… // Now you don’t!” A later prank finds Bear stealing doughnuts from a police officer (an ode to Yogi, maybe), mischievously setting up the red squirrel for the fall. All the while, graffiti artist Akyüz depicts the squirrel and an oft-ducking-from-trouble hare as sidekicks, friendly, thick outlines and saturated colors keeping time with the beat.
Mixing the melodies of hip-hop with the antics of preadolescence makes this colorful picture book a charming read for young rap fans and beginning readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7743-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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