Five children get busy earning funds to build a clubhouse in this primer on U.S. currency. Starting with a penny—good for “a perfect penny nail”—they pool resources as they industriously gather recyclable bottles, set up a lemonade stand and more; each project escalates the income, from a nickel to a dime to a quarter to, ultimately, a $100 bill. McMahon’s cartoons depict not only a cadre of boisterous young entrepreneurs laboring in a sunny suburban setting, but the front and back of each coin or bill, plus views of the hardware or other supplies that each would buy. These values may be already behind the inflationary times, but the designs are current enough to include the new fiver, and the clubhouse does get built. Robinson closes with notes on both how our money’s look changes regularly and also on skipped denominations: the 50-cent piece; the $1 coin and the $2 bill. Promoting the rewards of work along with exposing readers to the look and uses of money, plus a bit of arithmetic, this makes salutary reading on more than one level. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-58246-214-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tricycle
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2008
Scotton makes a stylish debut with this tale of a sleepless sheep—depicted as a blocky, pop-eyed, very soft-looking woolly with a skinny striped nightcap of unusual length—trying everything, from stripping down to his spotted shorts to counting all six hundred million billion and ten stars, twice, in an effort to doze off. Not even counting sheep . . . well, actually, that does work, once he counts himself. Dawn finds him tucked beneath a rather-too-small quilt while the rest of his flock rises to bathe, brush and riffle through the Daily Bleat. Russell doesn’t have quite the big personality of Ian Falconer’s Olivia, but more sophisticated fans of the precocious piglet will find in this art the same sort of daffy urbanity. Quite a contrast to the usual run of ovine-driven snoozers, like Phyllis Root’s Ten Sleepy Sheep, illustrated by Susan Gaber (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059848-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
The creators of Punctuation Takes a Vacation (2003) sentence readers to a good time with this follow-up. Feeling left out after the children in Mr. Wright’s class thunder outside for a Field Day, the nouns and verbs left in the classroom decide to organize events of their own. But having chosen like parts of speech for partners—“Glue, Markers and Tape stuck together. Shout wanted to be with Cheer. So did Chew and Eat.”—it quickly becomes apparent that as opposing teams they can’t actually do anything. Depicting the Nouns as objects and the Verbs as hyperactive v-shaped figures, Rowe creates a set of high-energy scenes, climaxing in a Tug of Words and other contests once the participants figure out that they’ll work better mixed rather than matched. This playful introduction to words recalls Ruth Heller’s Kites Sail High (1998) and Merry-Go-Round (1990) for liveliness, and closes with several simple exercises and games to get children into the act. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-8234-1982-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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