Another crowd pleaser from the creators of Chicken Butt! (2009).
A pet hamster comes to Room 2-D: So cute! So fluffy! So…toothy.
“Look—don’t touch,” warns Mr. Drake, the teacher (a bespectacled black man who manages to look both groovy and stodgy). “Though the children nodded yes, / Did they mean it? Take a guess.” And no sooner is tiny, big-eyed Fluffity lifted out of her cage for a general pass-around than she suddenly displays impressively sharklike teeth. She proceeds to (bloodlessly) nip and harry the entire frantic class out of the room, into the hall, and down to the library. Not even the teacher is immune, for as soon as he catches up, “Quick as lightning, Fluffity / Opened wide… // …and bit his knee / (Hanging on tenaciously).” The discovery that Fluffity likes to fetch tossed pencils and other small items at last allows peace to be restored—at least until the arrival of the next classroom pet: Jake the (large) snake. Cue a final view of one panic-stricken rodent. Cole places the bitty biter into quarters that are much too confined, but in keeping with the rollicking rhyme, his cartoon students are comically popeyed as well as being diverse in hair and skin tone. Perl makes the lesson explicit: “Get to know your pet before / Opening her cage’s door,” and be sure to provide enough opportunities for exercise.
Another crowd pleaser from the creators of Chicken Butt! (2009). (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2182-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An effective early chapter book conveyed in a slightly overdone gag.
Epistolary dispatches from the eternal canine/feline feud.
Simon the cat is angry. He had done a good job taking care of his boy, Andy, but now that Andy’s parents are divorced, a dog named Baxter has moved into Andy’s dad’s house. Simon believes that there isn’t enough room in Andy’s life for two furry friends, so he uses the power of the pen to get Baxter to move out. Inventively for the early-chapter-book format, the story is told in letters written back and forth; Simon’s are impeccably spelled on personalized stationery while Baxter’s spelling slowly improves through the letters he scrawls on scraps of paper. A few other animals make appearances—a puffy-lipped goldfish who for some reason punctuates her letter with “Blub…blub…” seems to be the only female character (cued through stereotypical use of eyelashes and red lipstick), and a mustachioed snail ferries the mail to and fro. White-appearing Andy is seen playing with both animals as a visual background to the text, as is his friend Noah (a dark-skinned child who perhaps should not be nicknamed “N Man”). Cat lovers will appreciate Simon’s prickliness while dog aficionados will likely enjoy Baxter’s obtuse enthusiasm, and all readers will learn about the time and patience it takes to overcome conflict and jealousy with someone you dislike.
An effective early chapter book conveyed in a slightly overdone gag. (Fiction. 6-8)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4492-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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