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HIDE & SEEK

Name: HIDE & SEEK
Author: Brenda Shannon Yee
ISBN: 0-531-30302-0

by Brenda Shannon Yee & illustrated by Debbie Tilley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

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Delicate, rickety, and very droll watercolors inject this buoyant tale with real presence. “I hide. You seek,” says a little trembling mouse to a bespectacled older woman, who may well not even know of the mouse’s existence. Then, in a twist on “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” the mouse makes off to hide from the woman. “1, 2. Tiptoe shoe. 3, 4. Creep to door. 5, 6. Old door sticks. 7, 8 Spy a crate. 9, 10. Quick! Dive in!” (That quote stretches across 10 pages, text written in huge letters across the bottom of each page, numbers on one side, words on the other.) The woman, who has been trying to discern where little squeaks are coming from (“Ready or not! Here I come!”), approaches the crate just when the mouse is taking a peek over the edge. Aye carumba! Here a giant nose and eyes face the mouse who’s about the size of the nose. The lady bolts and the mouse figures the game is afoot. “You leap, I shriek!” he squeaks. A slim tale, but clever and comical in how the mouse pulls the woman into the game. One can almost hear the shrieks of laughter from the audience. Tilley’s artwork is an enormous plus, with fine, wobbly lines and an up-close-and-personal point of view. (Picture book. 2-4)

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-531-30302-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

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A KISSING HAND FOR CHESTER RACCOON

From the Kissing Hand series

by Audrey Penn ; illustrated by Barbara L. Gibson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2014

Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original...

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A sweetened, condensed version of the best-selling picture book, The Kissing Hand.

As in the original, Chester Raccoon is nervous about attending Owl’s night school (raccoons are nocturnal). His mom kisses him on the paw and reminds him, “With a Kissing Hand… / We’ll never be apart.” The text boils the story down to its key elements, causing this version to feel rushed. Gone is the list of fun things Chester will get to do at school. Fans of the original may be disappointed that this board edition uses a different illustrator. Gibson’s work is equally sentimental, but her renderings are stiff and flat in comparison to the watercolors of Harper and Leak. Very young readers will probably not understand that Owl’s tree, filled with opossums, a squirrel, a chipmunk and others, is supposed to be a school.

Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original shouldn’t look to this version as replacement for their page-worn copies. (Board book. 2-4)

Pub Date: April 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-933718-77-4

Page Count: 14

Publisher: Tanglewood Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
CHESTER RACCOON AND THE ALMOST PERFECT SLEEPOVER
by Audrey Penn ; illustrated by Barbara L. Gibson

- BOOK REVIEW
KAI TO THE RESCUE!
by Audrey Penn ; illustrated by Mike Yamada

- BOOK REVIEW
A COLOR GAME FOR CHESTER RACCOON
by Audrey Penn & illustrated by Barbara L. Gibson

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FIVE BLACK CATS

by Patricia Hegarty ; illustrated by Julia Woolf ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2013

For toddlers unafraid of typical Halloween imagery.

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A troop of cats traverse a spooky landscape as they make their way to a party hosted by ghosts.

Each double-page spread shows the felines’ encounters with the likes of an owl, jack-o’-lanterns or a bat. One or two of these creepy meetings may be too abstract for the youngest readers, as the cats hear eerie noises with no discernible source on the page. The text, which consists of one rhyming couplet per scene, mostly scans despite a couple of wobbles: “Five black cats get a bit of a scare / As the flip-flapping wings of a bat fill the air.” The sleek, slightly retro art, likely created using a computer, depicts the cats cavorting at night through a shadowy cityscape, the countryside and a haunted house; they may scare some toddlers and delight others. A brighter color palette would have given the project a friendlier, more universal appeal. Luckily, the well-lit, final party scene provides a playful conclusion.

For toddlers unafraid of typical Halloween imagery. (Board book. 2-4)