Cazet has struck a vein of precious ore in his “Minnie and Moo” series for beginning readers. These are simple books, but have a distinct, eccentric narrative that displays gumption, decency, and dreams on the cows’ part. The stories are also funny, accompanied by dry, witty artwork and a hint of naughtiness that refuses to swim into focus. Here, Moo sighs wistfully over the lack of heroes in the modern world. “You have been reading again, haven’t you?” demands her boon companion Minnie, neatly investing the act of reading with all the subversiveness it deserves. Moo points to Zorro as a role model: “Most days he just hung around. But on some days, he dressed in black and scared away the bad guys with a sword.” Moo’s enthusiasm is infectious and soon she and Minnie are dressing up as a pair of cow Zorros, complete with a sword tipped with a discarded tube of lipstick and a can of deodorant: The Musk of Zorro. They sally forth to do some good deeds around the farm. They liberate the chickens from the opportunings of the rooster; they neutralize two pair of the farmer’s long underwear flapping on the clothesline. This sparks some high farce between the farmer and his wife, who wants to know how the letters P U got written in lipstick on the long johns. She thinks it’s a vindictive neighbor. The farmer notes, “I thinks it’s those two cows on the hill.” A delightful, clean, and spare story brimming with comedy, typeset so that it can be read like free verse, such as this existential item: “Are we all just cows/waiting to get hooked up/to the electric milker?” (Easy reader. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7894-2652-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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