Roll out the mats for this dino/yoga mashup treat.
Sun salutations meet dino indignation.
Ya gotta be “roar-and-rumble rough, and talon-tearing TOUGH!” to make it in Rex’s valley. So what are the members of his gang to make of a dino that walks in one day with a series of peaceful poses? Though Rex declares the newcomer to be “silly,” one by one his friends slip away to realign their spines and give their thighs some exercise. Incensed, Rex becomes a victim of his own bad temper, causing the true reason for his rudeness to come to light. “My jaws are deadly. My tail is spiny. My arms are strong! But also…tiny.” In a happy ending, Yogasaurus graciously teaches Rex a pose that doesn’t require use of the upper body. There’s a great deal of good yoga-based storytime read-aloud potential here, thanks in large part to the soft rhymes. The book gracefully weaves in such yoga moves as the plank or the butterfly while keeping the tone amusing and informative rather than preachy. The art highlights this humor perfectly. The book gets a little loosey-goosey with historical timelines (giant ground sloths most certainly did not live in the same era as dinosaurs), but kids will be doing too many downward dogs to care.
Roll out the mats for this dino/yoga mashup treat. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68364-414-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sounds True
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the...
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
BOOK REVIEW
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