THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE

Name: THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE
Author: Dianne Hofmeyr
ISBN: 978-1-84780-295-8

by Dianne Hofmeyr ; illustrated by Piet Grobler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2013

A lively alternative to the standard renditions, Celia Barker Lottridge’s The Name of the Tree, illustrated by Ian Wallace...

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In an animated retelling well-suited to reading aloud, this object lesson in the virtues of concentration features starving animals, a tree that must be named to give up its luscious fruit and a particularly bad-tempered lion.

In a time of drought, one tree offers relief. Told by the giant python guarding fruit “smelling of sweetest mangoes, fat as melons, juicy as pomegranates” that the tree must be addressed by name, Zebra, Monkey and Elephant in turn set out to learn it from distant Lion. So self-congratulatory and distractible are all three, though, that by the time they return, they’ve forgotten it. This leaves small Tortoise to crawl slowly, slowly to Lion and then slowly, carefully back, chanting the tree’s name over and over. Readers and listeners are invited to do the same, though considering the tongue-twisting names in other versions of this African tale, “Bojabi” won’t be that much of a challenge. The story’s narrative pattern is humorously highlighted by the increasingly choleric Lion’s ever-louder responses to the animals’ repeat visits. In eye-catching contrast to the wilted-looking sufferers in Grobler’s fine-lined watercolors, both Python and Tortoise sport bright patterns.

A lively alternative to the standard renditions, Celia Barker Lottridge’s The Name of the Tree, illustrated by Ian Wallace (1989), and Joanna Troughton’s Tortoise’s Dream (1980). (Picture book/folk tale. 6-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-84780-295-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Frances Lincoln

Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2013

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
PARIS CAT
by Dianne Hofmeyr ; illustrated by Piet Grobler

- BOOK REVIEW
FIDDLE DEE DEE!
by Dianne Hofmeyr ; illustrated by Piet Grobler

- BOOK REVIEW
TIGER WALK
by Dianne Hofmeyr ; illustrated by Jesse Hodgson

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THE POUT-POUT FISH AND THE MAD, MAD DAY

From the Pout-Pout Fish series

by Deborah Diesen ; illustrated by Dan Hanna ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 11, 2021

An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises.

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Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.

Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)

An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: May 11, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-374-30935-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WORRY-WORRY WHALE MADE 32 MISTAKES
by Deborah Diesen ; illustrated by Dan Hanna

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WORRY-WORRY WHALE AND THE CLASSROOM JITTERS
by Deborah Diesen ; illustrated by Dan Hanna

- BOOK REVIEW
POUT-POUT FISH
by Deborah Diesen ; illustrated by Dan Hanna

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LOST AND FOUND

by Oliver Jeffers & illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2006

Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably...

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A lad finds a penguin on his doorstep and resolutely sets out to return it in this briefly told import.

Eventually, he ends up rowing it all the way back to Antarctica, braving waves and storms, filling in the time by telling it stories. But then, feeling lonely after he drops his silent charge off, he belatedly realizes that it was probably lonely too, and turns back to find it. Seeing Jeffers’s small, distant figures in wide, simply brushed land- and sea-scapes, young viewers will probably cotton to the penguin’s feelings before the boy himself does—but all’s well that ends well, and the reunited companions are last seen adrift together in the wide blue sea.

Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably with this—slightly—less offbeat friendship tale. (Picture book. 6-8)