Simple, encouraging, and charming.
The youngest in the family gets some wheels!
“Everyone in my family has a bike,” says the young narrator. “But I don’t.” Dad, a bike enthusiast, has several, including a recumbent one (“If he gets too tired, he even has a bike he can lie down on and take a nap”). When the family goes out cycling together, the narrator has always ridden in a baby seat on Dad’s bike—until now. “I want a bike of my own!” says the child. So Dad gives the little one a hand-me-down tricycle. “It has one…two…three wheels,” observes the protagonist. “I ride it in the yard.” Later, Dad provides a two-wheel, pedal-less balance bike. Our hero practices riding “down the yard…between the bushes…around the cat…and a little bit over the flowers.” When Dad presents a bright red bike with training wheels, “It’s the most beautiful bike I’ve ever seen.” Dad explains that “the little wheels are just until you get the hang of it.” When it’s time to take the training wheels off, the little one experiences the heart-thumping anticipation, exhilaration, and surprise of a solo ride. This straightforward, at times humorous narrative deftly captures a young child’s viewpoint, brought to life by gorgeously textured, collagelike images. This is an engaging and relatable look at how skills are acquired through practice; laudably, Gibb makes clear that learning to ride a bike doesn’t happen overnight. The family is brown-skinned, and everyone wears a helmet while riding.
Simple, encouraging, and charming. (Picture book. 2-7)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781536231397
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
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
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Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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