The author and software designer show glimmers of creativity, but their learning curves are clearly still on the upswing.
Another app not ready for prime time, featuring a perfunctory story tricked out in a sparse assortment of crudely designed animations and touch-activated effects.
Depicted in the bland cartoon illustrations as a fox wearing Harry Potter–style eyeglasses, Jon stops at a pond on the way to school with thoughts of taking a dip. Spotting a green “monster” (plainly modeled on the Creature from the Black Lagoon) asleep on the bottom, he chucks a rock at it. When the monster rises, weeping, Jon expresses remorse, whereupon it utters a platitude—“When you see someone new you should always think twice! / Looks alone can’t tell you who’s mean or nice”—then pulls off its head to reveal that it was his (apparently amphibious) mother all along in a full body costume. Though the auto page-turn option works so quickly that some readers may miss the interactive effects entirely, tapping a tiny berry or shell in each tableau causes one or more small animals to pop into view briefly, then vanish either behind something or, with a notably unrealistic splash, into the pond. Similarly, tears drip and fish swim by, but one slight arm movement is the monster’s only animation, and Jon Fox manages to walk, run, talk and throw that rock without moving any body part.
The author and software designer show glimmers of creativity, but their learning curves are clearly still on the upswing. (iPad storybook app. 5-7)Pub Date: July 9, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Taylor Steil
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago.
A fairy tending their garden manages to survive a gaggle of young intruders.
In halting cadences typical of the long-running—and increasingly less amusing—How To Catch… series, the startled mite—never seen face-on in Elkerton’s candy-colored pictures and indeterminate of gender—wonders about the racially diverse interlopers: “Do they know that I can grant wishes? / Or that a new fairy is born when they giggle?” The visual action rather belies the sweetness of the verses, the palette, the bright flowers, and the multicolored resident zebras and unicorns, as after repeated, elaborately designed efforts to trap or even shoot (with a peashooter) the fairy come to naught, the laughing children are escorted out of the garden beneath a rising moon. The encounter ends on a (perhaps unconsciously) ominous note. “Hope they find their way back sometime,” the butterfly-winged narrator concludes. “And just maybe next time they’ll stay!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781728263205
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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