by Beth Rand ; illustrated by Beth Rand ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2017
Kids without a frame of reference will still get a kick out of these goofy gulls.
Take a seaside location, add a colony of gulls and the alphabet, and the result is a clever abecedary specific to Maine.
On each page one word is paired with a gull whose name begins with the same letter and who acts out the descriptive, alliterative sentence. “Airplane / Avery has an afternoon adventure in an airplane.” The red print in “Airplane” is echoed by red wings on the aircraft itself and, in the distance, red stripes on a lighthouse down below. A goggled gull is in the cockpit, giving readers a “thumbs up” with its wing. “Lobster / Ledge loves to see the lobsters in his trap.” A gull clad in red waterproof overalls holds an old-fashioned lobster pot under one wing; four live green lobsters accessorize the picture. As always with an alphabet book, some letters are less fertile than others. “Queen / The sandcastle makes Quoddy feel like a queen.” The letter X shows Xander looking at an X-ray of his broken leg; Zeke zips up his life jacket before zooming off in a canoe to Zephyr Cove. The simple, flat illustrations have a paper-collage, playful look that is amusing. The unusual names are explained by a note on the back cover that states that most of the gulls are named after Maine islands: Nubble, Vaill, Keeler, Haskell, and more. Though the gulls all look the same, it’s their outfits and actions that add individuality.
Kids without a frame of reference will still get a kick out of these goofy gulls. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-944762-08-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Islandport Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
Hee haw.
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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
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