“Pete is going to school, / and he sings this song: / ‘I’m rocking in my school shoes, / I’m rocking in my school shoes, /...
Pete, the strangely popular musical cat, is back (Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes, 2010), this time showing off all the things he can do in his school shoes.
“Pete is going to school, / and he sings this song: / ‘I’m rocking in my school shoes, / I’m rocking in my school shoes, / I’m rocking in my school shoes.’ ” Readers follow the self-confident Pete through his day as he tackles each new experience. Never been to the library? “Does Pete worry? / Goodness, no!” He just reads in his school shoes. From the lunchroom to the playground, Pete eats, sings, paints, adds and writes. Repetitive refrains abound, giving children the chance to chime in, and there is also an opportunity to guess Pete’s destination from clues within the text. As in Pete’s first outing, there is not much here to get excited about. It seems to be all about the tune and the song that Pete sings. Luckily, the book includes a gift card with a link to a downloadable song (unheard). Dean’s Pete is a hip, laid-back navy-blue cat in enormous high-top red sneakers and sometimes carries a red electric guitar. The long, skinny characters all have half-closed eyes, and all are devoid of facial expression.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-191024-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
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