A cozy pleaser, especially for the author’s fans and collectors.
The classic holiday poem, cut to fit, updated to suit modern sensibilities, and presented with a cast of small animals.
Actually, considering that in the original, Santa rode a “miniature sleigh” (here, an extravagantly decorated ice skate), there’s a certain logic to replacing the human family of her 2002 version of the poem with mice, transforming the reindeer into cardinals, and depicting the “jolly old elf” as a raccoon. Though the liberties Engelbreit takes with the text to accommodate these changes are relatively minor (“And then in a twinkling on the roof I heard / The prancing and pawing of each little bird”), dropping whole lines (“More rapid than eagles…” “As dry leaves…”), dressing Santa in velvet rather than fur, and having him suck not on a pipe but a peppermint stick (so “holly leaves,” not smoke, “encircled his head like a wreath”) justifiably account for the altered title. But what are elisions and distortions to audiences who delight in luxuriantly detailed domestic scenes strewn with antique toys, sweets, and dancing lines of block-lettered verse? For literary purists, there are alternative editions aplenty. (This book was digitally reviewed.)
A cozy pleaser, especially for the author’s fans and collectors. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-296933-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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