With ingenuity and good will, sticks and stones can be turned to better uses than breaking bones—but the tale demands...
Cavemen compare rocks, try to top each other, finally invent fun game.
“This Dave. / Dave love rock. / … / Dave’s rock bigger” than Jon’s rock. But “Jon’s rock faster” when thrown. Both pick up new rocks, with unsatisfactory results. Then Jon suggest both carve rocks into same round shape and Dave add hole in middle—make fine game tossing at upright stick! Jon and Dave go off arm in arm. Considering that Preston-Gannon starts the episode off with a quote from Mark Twain (“Name the greatest of all the inventors: accident”), the stilted language (carried over from Dave’s Cave, 2018) seems particularly affected, and the two light-skinned cave guys, with their Flintstones-style animal skins and shaggy manes (Dave’s, for some reason, is green) certainly are. Still, it’s salutary to see an escalating conflict resolved in an amicable, even creative way, and a bit of wordless byplay in which a set of forest creatures invent a wheeled scooter with the discarded game pieces adds a droll finish. The diagrams the animals draw in the dirt make an especially funny counterpoint to the dialogue.
With ingenuity and good will, sticks and stones can be turned to better uses than breaking bones—but the tale demands readers who are patient with cavespeak. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5362-0271-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Just a bit of well-armed fun, more suitable formatwise for a gift than classroom or library shelves.
A relatively sturdy pullout castle with a die-cut drawbridge and a dragon in the cellar serves as playscape for punch-out figures of medieval Maisy and her friends.
The dramatic main event follows a perfunctory scenario in which Maisy welcomes “Sir Charley” the crocodile and others to a bit of archery practice, then dons armor to win a friendly joust “by one point.” Even toddlers-at-arms (with minimal assistance from a yeoparent) can follow the easy instructions to set up the castle and brace it. The card-stock punch-outs include four characters in period dress, two rideable destriers and, oddly, a cannon. These can be stored in an accompanying pocket when not in use—or even dispensed with entirely, as the castle is not only festooned with busy guards and other residents, but there is lots of (literal) monkey business going on. Along with sending Maisy further from her customary domestic settings than usual, this outing features a possibly discomfiting quantity of weaponry—none seen actually in use, but still adding an unusually martial note to a series that generally promotes more peaceful pursuits.
Just a bit of well-armed fun, more suitable formatwise for a gift than classroom or library shelves. (Novelty. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7438-0
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
At best an incomplete discussion starter, without much political or psychological depth.
A pointed fable on the hazards of competition and the benefits of cooperation.
Published in Europe five years ago but not previously available here, the episode is played out by bunnies who gambol fetchingly through grassy fields in Kaufmann’s stippled watercolors. Binny, Benny, Bernie, Bonnie and Buddy live together, play together and share the food and fun they find—until, that is, a big stranger bunny named Hoppelpopp arrives and asks which one is the “best bunny.” When the others answer that they’re all the same, he sets up a race and other contests so that soon, all but the smallest, Buddy, are aggressively declaring themselves the fastest, strongest, smartest or bravest. When, however, Buddy draws his burrow mates back together to chase off a badger, they see the error of their ways—and Hoppelpopp, ignored, anticlimactically hops away. For all the worthy values on display here, readers will likely be left hanging by the abrupt ending; the big bunny’s evident lack of motive or agenda render him superfluous to the story and irrelevant to its theme.
At best an incomplete discussion starter, without much political or psychological depth. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3287-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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