A visual muddle makes for an early-reader fail.
Animal friends save the day when a dragon’s birthday party gets out of hand in this graphic-novel addition to the venerable Step into Reading line.
Elephant Joe and Zebra Pete hide in the bushes so they can jump out to surprise their friend Dragon. However, instead of appreciating the birthday surprise, Dragon flies into a tree and becomes entangled in the branches. The two friends suddenly turn into firefighters, complete with a ladder truck, for the rescue. After saving him, the friends present the birthday cake, but Dragon sets it afire while blowing out the candles. With no fire hydrant for water, Dragon picks up Elephant Joe and flies to a lake, where the pachyderm’s handy trunk sucks up water to save the day. While the cartoon illustrations will draw young readers in, the story is hard to follow. How did these two buddies instantaneously become firefighters? It might be a game of pretend, but to literal-minded young readers, that premise will be unclear. Though the speech bubbles are fun, including a frog who seems to act as narrator is another point of confusion, as it’s not always clear from its dialogue whether it’s interacting with the characters or describing the action. For a comic-book early-reader to succeed, the speech bubbles and graphic elements need to make sense. The digital art is colorful and amusing, with the animals’ expressions and eye movements telling much of the story.
A visual muddle makes for an early-reader fail. (Early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-37406-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too many bugs, figuratively.
Lucy, “the youngest member of a family of fireflies,” must overcome an irrational, moon-induced anxiety in order to leave her family tree trunk and glow.
The first six pages pull readers into a lush, beautiful world of nighttime: “When the sun has set, silence falls over the Big Forest, and all of the nighttime animals wake up.” Mixed media provide an enchanting forest background, with stylized flora and fauna eventually illuminated by a large, benign moon, because the night “doesn’t like to catch them by surprise.” Turning the page catches readers by surprise, though: the family of fireflies is decidedly comical and silly-looking. Similarly, the text moves from a lulling, magical cadence to a distinct shift in mood as the bugs ready themselves for their foray into the night: “They wave their bottoms in the air, wiggle their feelers, take a deep, deep breath, and sing, ‘Here we go, it’s time to glow!’ ” It’s an acceptable change, but more unevenness follows. Lucy’s excitement about finally joining the other bugs turns to “sobbing” two nights in a row. Instead of directly linking her behavior to understandable reactions of children to newness, the text undermines itself by making Lucy’s parents’ sweet reassurances impotent and using the grandmother’s scientific explanation of moonlight as an unnecessary metaphor. Further detracting from the story, the text becomes ever denser and more complex over the book’s short span.
Too many bugs, figuratively. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-84-16147-00-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cuento de Luz
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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