This gentle story ably helps fill a need in children’s literature and will help comfort small audiences with their own big...
Bell’s debut picture book quietly shows a child working through his anxieties.
Alfie, a peach-colored child with shaggy brown hair and downcast eyes, is no stranger to “that feeling.” He worries about party games, is too afraid about losing races to even run in them, and doesn’t think he is “brave enough to be Captain Starfish” in his school’s Underwater Dress-Up Parade. The morning after an evocative dream in which “he was carrying the ocean, all on his own,” Alfie just can’t muster up the courage to go to school. His understanding mother takes him to the aquarium, where he’s at first chagrined by a showoff-y starfish but then momentarily comforted by a shy, smiling clown fish. Subdued blue and orange illustrations, with lots of white space, match the emotional pitch of the story. Alfie doesn’t make it to the parade that year, but “it doesn’t matter”; he decides that next year he will “dress up as a clown fish.” Alfie’s success, aided by loving and patient parents, provides a model for children struggling with anxiety and assures them of their ultimate worth and capability.
This gentle story ably helps fill a need in children’s literature and will help comfort small audiences with their own big fears. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2837-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet.
A ghost longs to be scary, but none of the creepy personas she tries on fit.
Misty, a feline ghost with big green eyes and long whiskers, wants to be the frightening presence that her haunted house calls for, but sadly, she’s “too cute to be spooky.” She dons toilet paper to resemble a mummy, attempts to fly on a broom like a witch, and howls at the moon like a werewolf. Nothing works. She heads to a Halloween party dressed reluctantly as herself. When she arrives, her friends’ joyful screams reassure her that she’s great just as she is. Sadler’s message, though a familiar one, is delivered effectively in a charming, ghostly package. Misty truly is too precious to be frightening. Laberis depicts an endearingly spooky, all-animal cast—a frog witch, for instance, and a crocodilian mummy. Misty’s sidekick, a cheery little bat who lends support throughout, might be even more adorable than she is. Though Misty’s haunted house is filled with cobwebs and surrounded by jagged, leafless trees, the charming characters keep things from ever getting too frightening. The images will encourage lingering looks. Clearly, there’s plenty that makes Misty special just as she is—a takeaway that adults sharing the book with their little ones should be sure to drive home.
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593702901
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
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
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