While it’s not as strong as her first alphabet board book, it does reward the adventurous with stunning images in luminous...
Like W is for Wombat (2010), this alphabet book features the ordinary and the exotic from apple and turtle, to galah and wattle.
One-word captions paired with bold paintings in the Aboriginal folk-art tradition move readers through the alphabet, one letter per page. With thick black outlines and bright patterns of dots and dashes, Bancroft demonstrates she is master of the form. While the paintings glow on solid backgrounds of varied hues, the darker color choices make the black text difficult to read. Most of the objects representing each letter are animals or plants indigenous to Australia, but some of the choices, like a net for N and a vegetable (some kind of gourd, perhaps) for V feel forced to make the book fit the alphabet structure. Parents looking for a traditional alphabet title with recognizable objects would be advised to look elsewhere.
While it’s not as strong as her first alphabet board book, it does reward the adventurous with stunning images in luminous colors. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-921714-61-0
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Hare/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.
One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.
It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Robin Corey/Random
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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