Blue Kangaroo is Lily’s favorite stuffed animal. They play all day and sleep entwined at night. Then a gathering swarm of stuffed animal gifts invades their perfect world and cuts into Blue Kangaroo’s quality time. Indeed, in bed the young marsupial is shuttled further and further from Lily as new beasts—a tiny teddy, a green crocodile, a yellow rabbit, and more—are added, until he finds himself on the floor, having been squeezed right out. Blue Kangaroo wanders off and discovers the baby’s room, and his two waiting arms. When Lily finds Blue Kangaroo with the baby the next day, she snatches him back. The baby wails. Lily hands over all the other stuff animals: “He can have these, but nobody can have Blue Kangaroo!” Such a sudden case of protectiveness looks suspect; it’s nice to think that Lily’s rekindled desire for Blue Kangaroo is the product of undying love, but less noble motivations are more obviously applicable. Young readers will enjoy debating the source of Lily’s actions—to outdo the baby, or to remind them all that she loves Blue Kangaroo first, and best. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32638-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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