For children who appreciate clever and silly puns (Picture book. 4-8)
One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more—more potato puns than you can count, as a young spud strives to win the sack race at the Spud City Festival.
After training all year to win the Golden Bushel Award, Chip learns he must beat Curly, the new spud in town. From pre-race to finish, Breisacher and Heinsz use their setup to share verbal and brightly colored visual puns that children will enjoy. The race begins at the corner of Russet Boulevard and Fry Avenue. Couch potatoes—resting on a couch, of course—line the race route. The Waffle Fries can’t decide whom to root on. First Chip is in the lead. Then Curly speeds past. After Curly trips, the way is clear for Chip to win. Instead he offers Curly a hand up, and they race toward the finish line together. Chip doesn’t win, but he gains a friend, and Chip and Curly team up for the relay. Maybe that coveted Golden Bushel Award is within reach after all. All characters are potatoes illustrated in a range of (potato-y) skin tones. However, both Chip and Curly are male, and only the Sweet Potato cheerleaders are explicitly coded as female (with pink skirts and pompoms). The book’s raison d’être is the wordplay, with Home Fries, Tater Tots, and Twice Bakes joining the cast of characters and a spud-centric attitude toward verbs: These taters “wedge,” “whip,” “hash,” “pancake,” and “peel,” all leading up to the moment when “Chip’s dreams of winning [are] mashed.”
For children who appreciate clever and silly puns (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-58536-408-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings.
The diverse group of kids from All Are Welcome (2018) this time gathers in a vacant lot with tools in hand to clear the debris and make something new. But therein lies the rub: What should the something new be? While the exact nature of the disagreement is unfortunately not made clear to readers, the big feelings that the children exhibit are very clear (and for readers who need practice reading facial clues, there’s a labeled chart of 15 in the frontmatter). This book’s refrain is “How can I help? / What can we do?” And the answers, spread over several pages and not spelled out in so many words but rather shown in the illustrations, are: talk it through, compromise, and see things from another perspective. As a guide for dealing with feelings and problem-solving, the book is a bit slim and lacks a solid story to hook readers. But, as with its predecessor, its strength is again the diversity on display in its pages. There’s a rainbow of skin tones and hair colors as well as abundant variation in hair texture, several children exhibit visible disabilities, including one child who uses a wheelchair, and there are markers of religious and cultural diversity. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 29.6% of actual size.)
The story’s slight but allows kids to practice identifying and dealing with their own big feelings. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-57974-8
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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