Engaging, charming, and tender.
In this British import, brown-skinned, bespectacled Bertram is a tidy minimalist while Alan, a White, wild-haired redhead, prefers a comfortable mess. Bertram acquires Pierre, a cat with a haughty air, to add warmth to his rather stark home. He provides Pierre with both a fancy cat bed and meals in a fine china bowl, but Pierre spurns them—he even refuses to sit on the elegant sofa. In fact, the cat spends most of the time at Alan’s home, where he eats scraps from an old bowl, naps on an old soft coat, and cuddles next to Alan on his beat-up sofa. Understanding how his friend feels about his cat’s defection, Alan urges him to borrow the coat and the bowl. Pierre now spends his days with Bertram, but evenings are still spent with Alan on his sofa. So generous Alan lends Bertram his sofa, and all is well at Bertram’s. But now Alan is uneasy in his changed space. This time it is Bertram who has the generous solution. A wall is demolished, furniture is merged, and the friends join their homes. Smouha writes straightforwardly and empathetically in this tale of a strong friendship between two dissimilar men who respect and care for each other. Text is set within white spaces in Hubbard’s bright, detailed cartoons, which vary among vignettes and single- and double-page spreads. Depicted only in the illustrations and never discussed, race is merely one aspect of the characters’ quirky, eccentric personalities. Readers will cheer the outcome and root for this odd couple’s continued contentment.
Engaging, charming, and tender. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-908714-85-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cicada Books
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
