After a full day, the very young appreciate a hushed yet lively bedtime book to prepare for the evening ritual.
Lilting rhymes and charming, soft-edged illustrations in muted tones depict a variety of happy multiethnic and intergenerational families in this gentle ode to sleepyheads everywhere. Adorable, rosy-cheeked crawlers and new walkers of both genders are shown having a jolly, busy and very tiring day with an array of significant others, including loving pets; each body part has become totally exhausted by the day’s many activities. The warm text is easy enough for parents, older siblings, grandparents and other caregivers to memorize and dramatize; indeed, the text practically demands it. Try holding still while reading “Tired little arms, stretching up so high, // Tired little hands, waving bye, bye, bye.” Acting out these lines and, additionally, “Tired little toes, wiggling one to ten,” for example, will promote language development and prove great fun for babies and young toddlers to mimic. While the line “Tired little tummy, full of yum, yum, yum” sounds a tad twee, tiny listeners will love it and understand completely.
In the crowded field of bedtime books, this is a very sweet nighttime send-off for the littlest yawners. (Picture book. 9 mos.-2)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-16240-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS
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