A featherless chicken rejected by his fashionable fellows finds a way to puncture their vanity in this clumsy but well-meaning effort. Born naked and with allergies to boot, the chicken is sad when four others decked out in plumes, fancy headgear and, in one case, decorative letters and numbers, refuse to take him boating. Their attitude changes when he acquires finery of his own, becoming coated with leaves, papers and, rather oddly, a dinner fork after falling into some sticky mud. He changes again when his sneeze dumps them all in the water, and they emerge as bare as he. Laughing together, they strut off into the forest, planning the next day’s outing. The uneven typewriter font chosen for the text gives the pages an amateurish look, and children will be confused by Chen’s spattery, scribbly paintings, as his chickens are all visibly well-feathered. Still, the author allows readers to figure out the point for themselves, rather than hammering them over the head with it. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-9762-0569-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Heryin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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