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
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender...
A polar-bear parent speaks poetically of love for a child.
A genderless adult and cub travel through the landscapes of an arctic year. Each of the softly rendered double-page paintings has a very different feel and color palette as the pair go through the seasons, walking through wintry ice and snow and green summer meadows, cavorting in the blue ocean, watching whales, and playing beside musk oxen. The rhymes of the four-line stanzas are not forced, as is the case too often in picture books of this type: “When cold, winter winds / blow the leaves far and wide, / You’ll cross the great icebergs / with me by your side.” On a dark, snowy night, the loving parent says: “But for now, cuddle close / while the stars softly shine. // I’ll always be yours, / and you’ll always be mine.” As the last illustration shows the pair curled up for sleep, young listeners will be lulled to sweet dreams by the calm tenor of the pictures and the words. While far from original, this timeless theme is always in demand, and the combination of delightful illustrations and poetry that scans well make this a good choice for early-childhood classrooms, public libraries, and one-on-one home read-alouds.
Parent-child love and affection, appealingly presented, with the added attraction of the seasonal content and lack of gender restrictions. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-070-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
“It’s wise to stay clear / Of the dangerous cobra / All months of the year, / Including Octobra.” But it wouldn’t be wise to stay clear of Florian’s latest poetry collection, sixth in his successful series of witty poems and paintings about creatures of all sorts (Mammalabilia: Poems and Paintings, 2000, etc.). This volume includes 21 short poems about reptiles and amphibians, including common creatures such as the bullfrog and the box turtle and more exotic specimens such as the komodo dragon and the red-eyed tree frog. Teachers will like the way the rhyming poems integrate into elementary science lessons, imparting some basic zoological facts along with the giggles, and kids will love the poems because they’re clever and funny in a style reminiscent of Ogden Nash, full of wordplay and sly humor. Florian’s impressionistic full-page illustrations are done in watercolors on primed, brown paper bags, often offering another layer of humor, as in the orange newt reading the Newt News on the cover. A first choice for the poetry shelves in all libraries, this collection is toadally terrific. (Poetry. 4-10)
Pub Date: April 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-202591-X
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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