A modest but appealing picture book that combines simple storytelling and empowering messages with unforced charm.
In the first of a planned series, Odiwo offers gentle lessons in character building through the adventures of a talking, mischief-minded little pig.
Six-year-old Porsché Porscha the pink pig, so named because her mother “thought her newborn piglet looked like the most beautiful pink Porsche car she had ever seen,” isn’t like the other pigs on the farm. She can talk and so can her best friend, Wally the Goat. The curious little pig is always up for adventure, with reticent Wally in tow, and trouble often follows. For example, the friends are grounded after hitching a ride on a hay truck, and an encounter with a beehive leaves Porsché Porscha with a sore snout. In this debut children’s book by Odiwo (Blessings For My Child, 2009), kind Farmer Fiola is the grownup, delivering gentle lessons in good manners and honesty, as well as a between-the-lines message about the rewards of reading. Farmer Fiola scolds Porsché Porscha for taking a piece of pie without asking; but she praises her for telling the truth about it, and reminds her to wash her hooves before eating dinner. She treats Porsché Porscha’s bee sting, buys her a book about bees, and they “read together” at bedtime, while the little pig learns “a lot about bees and what not to do around them.” And while this is certainly not a book about real-life pigs, the author lightly weaves a few facts about them into her narrative. Porsché Porscha says that her feet are called trotters, for example, and her nose is a snout. When she disdains wallowing in the mud, Farmer Fiola points out that because pigs don’t sweat, mud helps them stay cool. (Porsché Porscha’s solution is a nice clean pool for soaking.) The story’s idyllic farm setting and quirky characters are pleasantly realized in cartoonlike, full-page digital illustrations, complemented by large text against blue, yellow, and green backgrounds with a subtle pig-foot motif.
A modest but appealing picture book that combines simple storytelling and empowering messages with unforced charm.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-1500562519
Page Count: 44
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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