Four cohabiting friends take a journey to escape 100 days of rain.
The gentle creatures dress, act, and talk like kind, friendly people—and sport antlers and vaguely mouselike silhouettes. Their light-brown, white-freckled faces blend harmoniously with the muted, dreamlike landscapes. The plot is episodic; after the smallest friend, Minnie, has “the most fabulous idea in her whole life,” the friends go through a variety of adventures as they pursue a sunny picnic on top of the Blue Mountain. They initially ride horses that resemble unicorns, after which they use tools to turn a shipwrecked pirate ship into a veritable ark, collecting animals as they go. The story is long and tedious, crowded with hyperbolic words, exclamation points, and breathlessly patronizing expressions such as “Oh my” and “Oh yes.” The whimsical illustrations cannot save the verbose text. Reading the story is further complicated by the 19 interspersed sets of song lyrics from the accompanying CD. The CD includes a male voice reading the story along with mostly original ditties incorporating various styles of world music, including instruments plus several different, pleasant voices, into short, often hypnotic, songs. Single song tracks can be useful for encouraging movement or naptime with little ones; playing the text-plus-songs or reading the book aloud is unlikely to keep a child engrossed. Ironically, some of the best writing is in the lyrics.
Disappointing. (Picture book/music. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-2-925108-69-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: The Secret Mountain
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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Dancing is one of the most universal elements of cultures the world over.
In onomatopoeic, rhyming text, Bolling encourages readers to dance in styles including folk dance, classical ballet, breakdancing, and line dancing. Read aloud, the zippy text will engage young children: “Tappity Tap / Fingers Snap,” reads the rhyme on the double-page spread for flamenco; “Jiggity-Jig / Zig-zag-zig” describes Irish step dancing. The ballet pages stereotypically include only children in dresses or tutus, but one of these dancers wears hijab. Overall, children included are racially diverse and vary in gender presentation. Diaz’s illustrations show her background in animated films; her active child dancers generally have the large-eyed sameness of cartoon characters. The endpapers, with shoes and musical instruments, could become a matching game with pages in the book. The dances depicted are described at the end, including kathak from India and kuku from Guinea, West Africa. Unfortunately, these explanations are quite rudimentary. Kathak dancers use their facial expressions extensively in addition to the “movements of their hands and their jingling feet,” as described in the book. Although today kuku is danced at all types of celebrations in several countries, it was once done after fishing, an activity acknowledged in the illustrations but not mentioned in the explanatory text.
The snappy text will get toes tapping, but the information it carries is limited. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63592-142-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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BOOK REVIEW
Two kids, probably siblings, explore their surrounding world through magnification.
While the older one remains inside with a microscope, the younger prefers the outside, examining all with a large hand-held magnifying glass. “I see,” the kid declares, focusing on several insects and animals while peering through the glass. A large, blue-black ant grins up through the glass as the child states, “I see an ant.” A butterfly, a snail, and robins’ eggs similarly appear through the glass, all narrated in the short, patterned text. Arriving home with discoveries crawling and flapping behind, the explorer now declares, “We see,” to the older child. The minimalist text is perfect for emerging readers, allowing children the ability to successfully read a whole book. Each repetitive sentence with its additional new word is coupled with recognizable picture cues to help in decoding. Cepeda’s characteristically energetic artwork offers sharp-edged, jagged lines that give it a scratch-art look. The siblings are dressed nearly identically, in blue shorts and red polo shirts, and they have tousled brown hair, beige skin, and big smiles.
The book’s simplicity guarantees achievement for beginning readers. (Picture book/early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4504-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS
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