by Bruce Brooks & illustrated by Elena Pavlov ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 1998
A valentine of a picture book—his first—from Brooks (The Red Wasteland, p. 808, etc.). It’s a dulcet rhyme—“A piece of the moon/a part of the sky/two words from a tune/a dog passing by,” with each piece being a part of the whole. The whole, in this case, is a delicious computer-produced collage made from Victorian greeting cards, cunningly assembled and repeated. Motifs appear and re-appear: sunflowers and raspberries, doll houses and a carefully hung moon. A golden-haired girl and a boy in a red vest hold tea things or books or paints, all in a jumble of the slightly faded colors of Prang prints. “Each piece is a part/of more left to find” appears over pages with die-cut windows, in a book that, as in Istvan Banyai’s works, is more enjoyable with every reading, offering up small visual gems, tricks in perspective, and very dear details. Children will find this appealing, but the book may be tucked into Christmas stockings and slipped into love letters for grown-ups as well. (Picture book. 6-10)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-023594-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
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by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page & illustrated by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 2003
Not only does Jenkins (Life on Earth, 2002, etc.) again display a genius for creating paper-collage wildlife portraits with astonishingly realistic skin, fur, and feathers, but here on alternate spreads he zooms in for equally lifelike close-ups of ears, eyes, noses, mouths, feet, and tails. Five examples of each organ thrusting in from beyond the pages’ edges for each “What do you do” question precede spreads in which the point of view pulls back to show the whole animal, with a short accompanying caption. Visual surprises abound: a field cricket’s ears are actually on its legs; a horned lizard can (and does, here) squirt blood from its eyes as a defense mechanism; in an ingenious use of page design, a five-lined skink’s breakable tail enters and leaves the center gutter at different points. Capped by a systematic appendix furnishing more, and often arresting, details—“A humpback whale can be 50 feet long and weigh a ton per foot”—this array of wide eyes and open mouths will definitely have viewers responding with wide eyes and open mouths of their own. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: March 24, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-25628-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2003
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by Robin Pulver & illustrated by Lynn Rowe Reed ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2006
The creators of Punctuation Takes a Vacation (2003) sentence readers to a good time with this follow-up. Feeling left out after the children in Mr. Wright’s class thunder outside for a Field Day, the nouns and verbs left in the classroom decide to organize events of their own. But having chosen like parts of speech for partners—“Glue, Markers and Tape stuck together. Shout wanted to be with Cheer. So did Chew and Eat.”—it quickly becomes apparent that as opposing teams they can’t actually do anything. Depicting the Nouns as objects and the Verbs as hyperactive v-shaped figures, Rowe creates a set of high-energy scenes, climaxing in a Tug of Words and other contests once the participants figure out that they’ll work better mixed rather than matched. This playful introduction to words recalls Ruth Heller’s Kites Sail High (1998) and Merry-Go-Round (1990) for liveliness, and closes with several simple exercises and games to get children into the act. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-8234-1982-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Robin Pulver ; illustrated by Stephanie Roth Sisson
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