A child-friendly environmental message with an emphasis on teamwork.
The tree-planting machine a young superhero invents explodes with the effort, but he discovers that children working together can help save animals and their forest homes.
Bookless and Deeptown return with this lively follow-up to Captain Green and the Plastic Scene (2018), starring the same environment-loving protagonist. Readers meet him happily inventing something. But, like many young inventors, he’s not sure what it will do. Fate intervenes with calls for help from Hornbill, Elephant, and Orangutan. Trees are being cut, harvested, and burned, and they have no food or homes. The caped, masked hero tweaks his invention to plant trees—but how can he plant so many? His invention blows up with a “BANG!” but the sight of a classroom full of students studying trees reminds him that teamwork can also become a Tree Machine. Captain Green’s language is appealing: “Oh, green gravy!” he expostulates, and “My green-ness, this is fun!” he says as they all plant trees together. Deeptown’s cartoon illustrations show an engaging small White hero, a diverse classroom, and animals that look like animals but whose body language and expressions carry emotion. Most environmental educators would prefer not to burden preschoolers with the issue of environmental destruction, but if it seems necessary, this is lighthearted enough to fill the bill. A spread of backmatter includes concept amplification and reasonable suggestions for helping save forests.
A child-friendly environmental message with an emphasis on teamwork. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-981-48-9320-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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