A talented bug wants to play music but is nervous about taking the stage solo.
To compete in the Soggy Bog Talent Show, Mac the millipede decides to join a band. He grabs his many instruments in his many, many hands and heads out. Mac joins in with each rehearsing group he finds, playing violin with a tiny, antennaed orchestra, blowing his trumpet with some alley cats, and crooning with a bird a cappella group, among others. Each group’s spokesanimal compliments his talents but dismisses the prospective musician. The birds even try to eat him! They scare Mac so much that he runs all the way onto the talent show stage—alone. Then all “his new friends” in the audience—the bands he’s recently met—call out for him to play a different instrument (and “Sorry for trying to eat you!” yells one bird). Mac breathes deeply, then starts playing every instrument at once, embracing his (reader-anticipated) calling to be “his very own ONE MAN BAND!” The text incorporates some playful elements, including some internal rhyme and sequential panels, although its simple story with predictable plot turns provides little beyond the first read-through. All the animal characters, even mammals, are bug-eyed, rendered in saturated colors and placed against detailed backgrounds that provide some visual fodder.
A cohesive chord that nevertheless rings hollow. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3370-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING
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In this deceptively spare, very beginning reader, a girl assembles a robot and then treats it like a slave until it goes on strike.
Having put the robot together from a jumble of loose parts, the budding engineer issues an increasingly peremptory series of rhymed orders— “Throw, Bot. / Row, Bot”—that turn from playful activities like chasing bubbles in the yard to tasks like hoeing the garden, mowing the lawn and towing her around in a wagon. Jung crafts a robot with riveted edges, big googly eyes and a smile that turns down in stages to a scowl as the work is piled on. At last, the exhausted robot plops itself down, then in response to its tormentor’s angry “Don’t say no, Bot!” stomps off in a huff. In one to four spacious, sequential panels per spread, Jung develops both the plotline and the emotional conflict using smoothly modeled cartoon figures against monochromatic or minimally detailed backgrounds. The child’s commands, confined in small dialogue balloons, are rhymed until her repentant “Come on home, Bot” breaks the pattern but leads to a more equitable division of labor at the end.
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the rest. (Easy reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87083-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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