An engaging animal tale that may help readers envision possible happy futures after a loss.
A lost grizzly bear gets adopted by an array of new animal friends in this picture book.
Deep in a blue-green and magenta wooded landscape, Grizzly has gotten lost and can’t find home. Exhausted, he sleeps and then awakes to discover plucky yellow-and-pink Bird. Bird expresses concern for his situation and helps Grizzly locate an “abandoned honeycomb” dripping with oodles of golden goo. Having fed him, Bird offers platitudes: “Even when things don’t go our way, if we have gratitude, we can be happy.” Understandably, Grizzly is frustrated by this advice: “I have absolutely lost everything!” Readers may be inclined to agree, but Bird introduces Grizzly to a menagerie of birds, a wolf, squirrels, and a badger and tells the story of her own lonely arrival in the woods and how a found family cared for her. Although his pals can’t help him find his home, Grizzly learns to accept that they are his new family. When some grizzlies show up to catch fish, he makes an unexpected choice. While character interactions deftly model compassion, care, and active listening, Mathew skirts emotional realism—it takes Grizzly a shockingly short time to adapt to the sadness of his loss, and there are no further episodes of nostalgia or longing for what is gone. Barron’s bright, animation-inspired, jewel-tone, lineless digital art, packed with simplified cartoon shapes and dynamic composition, enlivens this enjoyable friendship narrative.
An engaging animal tale that may help readers envision possible happy futures after a loss.Pub Date: May 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63-752776-4
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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
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