An earnest animal tale that could use a less obscure moral.
The team of Brooks and Goldstein (Bubbies-Babies Presents: Celebrating Differences, 2017) continues its picture book series with this sequel about self-acceptance.
Using the conceit that the anthropomorphized young animals in grandmother black bear Bubbie’s classroom are trying to find themselves, this rhyming text is accompanied by computer-generated images. The pictures reveal well-executed, child-friendly characters searching different locations. First, Piper the horse explores her room, then thinks perhaps the last place she saw herself was on the playground. There, Decker the cheetah examines all of the equipment for himself before checking the lost-and-found box. The things he finds prompt zebra siblings Michael and Lee to hunt for themselves at the beach. Shane the turtle, who uses a wheelchair, checks for himself at the bakery. Leslie the cat thinks maybe she’s at the house of Evan the anteater. Teri the dog looks for herself at home. After taking a bath, she wipes steam from the mirror and spies her own face. Goldstein’s illustrations are cute and Brooks’ rhymes, while uneven and poorly spaced on the page, making the stanza ends hard to find, work rhythmically when read aloud. But the message will go over the heads of young readers, who will likely see the silliness of looking for yourself as a goofy game.
An earnest animal tale that could use a less obscure moral.Pub Date: June 23, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Black Cherry Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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