Cheerily delivers the lesson that it’s best to be yourself.
Playful rhymes and brilliant illustrations camouflage a search for identity.
When Chameleon wants “to be someone new / And see life from a different view,” forest friends agree to help the lizard become a new, “dazzling” self. Strategic formatting—a rhymed riddle on each recto page followed by an answer on the next verso—encourages readers to guess what familiar animal Chameleon will turn into next. Young readers will also enjoy the challenge of searching the illustrations to find Chameleon’s transformations, especially when they turn into a very realistic monkey and a tiny shark. But an alternating refrain develops with each transformation: “No, [animal name] actually doesn’t feel right” or “Or, maybe something else!” At last, Chameleon poses one more riddle: “I want to be colorful—red, green, yellow, and blue / And to myself I want to be true. / I am good at hiding and live in a tree / I’m a master of disguise… / what could I be?” A dazzling illustration of a chameleon presents the answer, and Chameleon learns that the best answer to “What could I be?” is “ME!” Look carefully. The answer is on the back endpaper. Colorful, humorous illustrations befitting a questing chameleon make this a good read-aloud, but preread, as black text on several pages blurs into a dark background.
Cheerily delivers the lesson that it’s best to be yourself. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953458-15-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Yeehoo Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A zany, rib-tickling bedtime tour de force.
Eschewing sleep, the froggies engage in bizarre nighttime capers.
This unusual bedtime book alerts readers with the bold opening message that “the froggies do NOT want to sleep.” Indeed! Instead, the froggies want to hop. Reasonable. They also want to practice the accordion, ride unicycles, and play dress up! Hmmm? They want to go on long country drives and “joust like knights.” OK. And they want to perform underwater ballet and “tame ferocious beasties”! Really? Pushing the envelope totally, the froggies want to sing opera while being shot from a cannon, fly spaceships, and engage in burping contests with ETs. But they absolutely do not want to sleep…maybe. Beginning with the froggies’ surreptitious exit from bed on the front endpapers, the realistically executed, fantastically conceived illustrations track the froggies’ nocturnal activities from the sublime to the ridiculous in a series of increasingly dramatic double-page spreads. Early images show leggy amphibians tiptoeing across the page before exuberantly hopping frogs jam-pack the spread. Hilarious scenes of frogs playing accordions, spinning on unicycles, dressing up in period costumes, speeding like Mr. Toad in a flashy red roadster, aerially jousting with toilet plungers, performing ballet lifts underwater, riding a submerged alligator (backward), operatically exploding from a cannon, and zipping through galaxies in a spaceship appropriately culminate on the rear endpapers with the exhausted froggies finally crashing into bed.
A zany, rib-tickling bedtime tour de force. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-58089-524-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A particularly soppy, sloppy addition to an already-overstuffed genre.
A bear cub gets a load of lyrical loving from a lumbering parent in this nature walk.
Expressed in stumbling rhyme—“I love you more than trees / love to change with every season. / I love you more than anything. / I cannot name just one reason”—Benson’s perfervid sentiments accompany scenes of bear and cub strolling through stands of birch, splashing into a river to watch (just watch) fish, and, in a final moonlit scene, cuddling beneath starry skies. Foxes, otters, and other animal parents and offspring, likewise adoring, make foreground cameos along the way in Lambert’s neatly composed paper-collage–style illustrations. Since the bears are obvious stand-ins for humans (the cub even points at things and in most views is posed on two legs), the gender ambiguity in both writing and art allow human readers some latitude in drawing personal connections, but that’s not enough to distinguish this uninspired effort among the teeming swarm of “I Love You This Much!” titles.
A particularly soppy, sloppy addition to an already-overstuffed genre. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68010-022-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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