Other, stronger picture books on this theme abound.
A celebration of gardening and the harvest doesn’t quite deliver a full-grown story.
Evy is so preoccupied by gardening that she fails to notice a series of absurd, seasonally linked oddities taking place around her. A bevy of farm animals participates in these happenings, which include cows parading down the street in fancy hats that seem like Easter bonnets, donkeys sailing through the sky in sailboats, pigs dancing around a maypole, and chickens, rabbits and pigs playing badminton. Evy doesn’t notice any of these things going on around her, and the repeated parenthetical phrase “(What was Evy doing?)” prompts readers to find her performing various gardening tasks from page to page. Ultimately, two wordless spreads show readers that Evy was preparing a big harvest feast, with what looks like a pumpkin pie as the main dish, but this culmination feels anticlimactic due to the lack of concluding text as well as the revealing title and cover art. A final page shows Evy looking ahead to next year’s planting and harvesting season. While certainly silly, the picture book’s appeal is undermined by its lack of cohesion, and the comical watercolor-and-ink illustrations don’t add enough narrative content to bolster the repetitive text.
Other, stronger picture books on this theme abound. (recipes, pumpkin facts) (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-9526-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Who knew that turning the pages could be the best part of a book?
The concept of this picture book is simple enough: 10 birds topple, slip, and dive their way off the titular twig until there is one left. The text itself echoes familiar singsong-y children’s rhymes like “Five Little Pumpkins.” While it mostly succeeds, there are some awkward spots: “5 on a twig, there used to be more… / SNAP! Don’t say a word, now there are four.” (On each page the number is both spelled out and represented as a numeral). The real scene stealer, however, is the book’s interplay between Cole’s illustrations and the physical pages themselves. In much the same way Eric Carle utilizes the pages in The Very Hungry Caterpillar to show the little critter eating its way through the week, Cole uses pages of increasing width to show how the twig grows shorter as each bird falls and marches off purposefully with the others, all headed toward verso with pieces of twig in their beaks. Stylistically, the book is captivating. The very colorful, egg-shaped birds appear on a single, thin black line on a stark white background. This backdrop stands in powerful contrast to the book’s final two pages, which are set against black negative space, a theme echoed in the book’s feather-print endpapers. The heavy, thick pages make it easy for little hands to participate. The text takes a back seat to the playful and compelling design, which is sure to delight readers.
Who knew that turning the pages could be the best part of a book? (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72821-593-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
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