Overall, clever: entomology via etymology.
Funny speculation is made about the common names of 11 insects, after which a few facts are offered.
The text is playful, introducing each insect with a question in bold, dark print, beginning with, “Do dragonflies breathe fire?” After the colorful, cartoonish artwork expands on the theme with visions of treasure chests in sand and children dressed as pirates and knights battling fire-equipped dragonflies, the page turn reveals a larger image of the insect along with a definitive “No!” This is followed by information about the unique way a dragonfly catches its prey. The text is pleasingly consistent in this approach, and it offers a nice little surprise with the final bug—plus additional, accessible notes about insects. Unfortunately, the art is less successful than the text. While care was given to different skin and eye colors for the many children pictured with the bugs, there is an awkwardness in the renderings of the children’s movements, penciled noses, and frequently open, often toothless mouths. Composition and layout tend to produce an uncomfortable feeling of crowding, which in turn makes it hard to linger on any one page. It’s great to have large, fantastical bugs, flies, and beetles on the pages with whimsical questions, but the perspective on the pages that offer factual text makes it hard to know insects’ true relative sizes.
Overall, clever: entomology via etymology. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-943978-35-9
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Persnickety Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.
Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.
The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593616673
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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