An enabling alternative to or companion for Stuart Murphy’s Double the Ducks, illustrated by Valeria Petrone (2003), in the...
This new entry in the Mouse Math series sends Albert to the fair, where there are plenty of opportunities to double up.
His friend Leo out when Albert comes calling, the little mouse heads to the fair with big sister Wanda and buys two maps (one for Leo), rides the Ferris wheel four times—twice for himself and then twice more for Leo—wins the pie-eating contest by chowing down on three slices and then three more, and plays the ring toss until he wins the eight tokens needed for two packages of five Robo-Rat action figures. At each stop the arithmetical doubling is depicted below the simple cartoon illustrations both with number sentences and iconic images of such items as tickets or pie slices. Suggestions for discussion topics and enrichment activities at the end are addressed to educators, but young readers should have no trouble themselves re-creating the paper-towel–tube ring toss that Albert and Leo set up after discovering that they had both been to the fair and now have an oversupply of Robo-Rats. Simultaneously publishing are Albert Helps Out (using coins) and Where’s Albert? (skip counting), both also by May, and Bravo, Albert! (patterns), by Lori Haskins Houran.
An enabling alternative to or companion for Stuart Murphy’s Double the Ducks, illustrated by Valeria Petrone (2003), in the venerable MathStart series. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-57565-835-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Low grade.
A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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