There is much to enjoy here, and the illustrations and allusions beg for repeat readings.
Readers check in on Mr. Wolf every hour of his birthday, but it seems like the poor guy just can’t catch a break on his special day.
Four-and-twenty blackbirds wake him up (at 7 a.m.), asking him the titular question. His grumpy answer? “It’s time for blackbird pie.” His porcine neighbors keep him from a snooze by slamming their doors on their way to work (“time for bacon sandwiches”). And the day continues in this vein: The letter carrier (a girl in a red hood) skips his house, his cupboard is bare, it rains on the way to the store, and every hour, fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters check in on Mr.Wolf, asking him for the time. But readers won’t need to ask for the time. A marvelous mix of timepieces is scattered throughout the text and includes analog and digital clocks of all sorts: a sundial, a pocket watch, a wristwatch and a cuckoo clock, among others. By the time the hapless birthday boy is awoken from his nap by a fiddle-playing cat, observant readers will have guessed the “surprise” ending. But the time-telling practice and literary references aren’t even the best treasure here. Gliori’s watercolor-and-ink illustrations are both detailed and delicately executed, charming and wowing at the same time.
There is much to enjoy here, and the illustrations and allusions beg for repeat readings. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8027-3432-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Whether in hand or on shelf, this one’s sure to make a splash anywhere and everywhere.
A frog tries to do everything a goat does, too.
Goat asks Frog to look at them before declaring “I’m ON it!” while balancing atop a tree stump near a pond. After an “Oooh!” and a “You know what?” Frog leaps off their lily pad to balance on a rock: “I’m on it, too!” Goat grabs a prop so that they can be both “on it AND beside it.” (It may take young readers a little bit to realize there are two its.) So does Frog. The competition continues as Frog struggles to mimic overconfident Goat’s antics. In addition to on and beside, the pair adds inside, between, under, and more. Eventually, it all gets to be too much for Frog to handle, so Frog falls into the water, resumes position on the lily pad, and declares “I am OVER it” while eating a fly. In an act of solidarity, Goat jumps in, too. In Tsurumi’s first foray into early readers she pares down her energetic, colorful cartoon style to the bare essentials without losing any of the madcap fun. Using fewer than 80 repeated words (over 12 of which are prepositions), the clever text instructs, delights, and revels in its own playfulness. Color-coded speech bubbles (orange for Goat, green for Frog) help match the dialogue with each speaker. Like others in the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading series, Elephant and Piggie metafictively bookend the main narrative with hilariously on-the-nose commentary.
Whether in hand or on shelf, this one’s sure to make a splash anywhere and everywhere. (Early reader. 4-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-368-06696-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Good fun for early counters.
A one-to-10 counting book featuring a cast of active pigeons.
“One bright and sunny morning, ten pigeons” sit on a wire when along come some bees and throw them all into a tizzy. A handful of the pigeons take off—readers can count their tails in the margins of the pages—so “OK. Let’s try that again. Um, ten minus six is… …four.” Readers can see right on the wire there that if six pigeons fly off, that leaves four—math at its most accessible. Well, there are four until one finds a sandwich that lures four of the dispersed birds to return. That adds up to eight. And there they are, that now gray and cloudy morning, when it starts to rain and six pigeons fly away to seek shelter. Again, readers can count the birds to arrive at the new number, or they can work the equation that is provided: “Let's see…eight minus six is…”? On the counting game goes via interruptions into the twilight, when the narrator gives up—these pigeons won’t stay still long enough to introduce them—until it comes time to go to bed and end the story. Citro’s exasperated text works hand in glove with Watson’s comical birds to make this counting game a joy rather than a task. The narrative text expresses equations in words, and corresponding number sentences are tucked into the scenes.
Good fun for early counters. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-943147-62-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: The Innovation Press
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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