Not life-changing but engaging—extra points for Braille.
There’s more than meets the eye in this day-at-the-beach primer.
Rhyming text with fun-to-say sound effects and simple illustrations with ingenious tactile features bring the sights, sounds, and sensations of a trip to the beach to life in this 10-page board book. Uncluttered pages feature common clothing and accoutrements a child might encounter on a visit to the seaside, from a polka-dot hat with colorful, inlaid fabric to shiny embossed sunglasses, a bottle of sunscreen, a sun suit, and rubbery beach shoes that go “squish, squish, squish” when one walks. Yellow, glittering sandpaper depicts the sand that crunches underfoot; a smooth expanse of gleaming, wavy blue is the ocean on which a tiny sailboat floats. Children should be fascinated with the inviting array of things to touch: the spiral contours of seashells, the ribbed arms of a starfish, a shiny, plastic bucket and spade, and a plush, cloth beach towel, for example. The day’s festivities conclude with a picnic packed in a lunchbox that little fingers can open, followed by a Popsicle for dessert. The book’s sturdy construction should withstand the punishment of grabby hands. The rhyme scheme is consistent, though the meter may occasionally confuse. Braille text indicates page numbers and several prominent vocabulary words.
Not life-changing but engaging—extra points for Braille. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-84643-923-0
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Child's Play
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sure to promote toddler wanderlust; here’s hoping more excursions are en route
The youngest tourists can take a nibble out of the Big Apple in this first installment of the My Little Cities series.
Readers visit such New York City icons as the Empire State Building, the NYC subway, Times Square, Coney Island, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Adams’ simple text scans nicely, using two-word lines per double-page spread to set the scene and introduce youngsters to opposites. “Listen quiet / listen loud / sit alone / or in a crowd” is paired with Broadway, Times Square, Central Park, and Yankee Stadium respectively. Pizzoli, in his muted-colored cartoons, charmingly strips each landmark to toddler-friendly essentials; the New York Public Library lions are delightful, and the Times Square crowds are refreshingly manageable. The tableaux are populated with a representative cross-section of humanity in smiling profile—never has New York City looked so friendly. The final two pages review all the sights and share two to three sentences of simple facts about each one. Using much the same format, companion London focuses on that storied city and introduces young armchair travelers to Big Ben, the London Eye, Abbey Road (with a re-enactment of the famous Beatles cover), and a double-decker bus cruising through Piccadilly Circus.
Sure to promote toddler wanderlust; here’s hoping more excursions are en route . (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5388-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A generic version of the treat, with barely a hint of its ethnic origins and that’s less a usable recipe than just going...
More yummy eats for toque-wearing toddlers to dish up.
As in Pancakes! (2016) and Pizza! (2017), Nieminen begins by laying out labeled ingredients and required kitchenware, all reduced to very simple, stylized shapes. She then goes on to offer step-by-step directions for seasoning and sauteing the meat (chicken), chopping veggies (“Real knives are sharp! Always ask an adult for help”), making guacamole, mixing corn and beans (the latter from a can), laying out all the fixings, and finally warming the (soft, premade) tortillas. Each transformation along the way is accomplished by spinning a wheel, pulling a tab, or pulling out a detachable chopping knife. Instructions are minimal—the guac is made by mashing avocado with “other ingredients,” presumably the lime, salt, and cilantro depicted above the bowl—and the note to enlist an adult sous-chef comes after the cooking stage, which seems rather late in the process. More problematically, unlike the previous outings, the payoff here is unsatisfyingly abstract: a big, stiff, chartreuse die-cut disk representing the tortilla gets forcibly folded in half after “toppings” from the previous spread are imaginarily applied.
A generic version of the treat, with barely a hint of its ethnic origins and that’s less a usable recipe than just going through (some of) the motions . (Informational novelty. 1-3)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7148-7505-7
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Phaidon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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