This fantasy field trip is one kids are better off skipping.
Shark Dog enlivens a field trip to the great outdoors.
Ms. Ablett invites the child narrator’s father along since he’s a famous explorer, and “it made sense for Shark Dog to join the fun” as well. The trip to the woods starts off as any might, the racially diverse students using magnifying glasses to examine creepy-crawlies and record their finds. But Shark Dog’s arrival at a pond full of identical-looking “frogs and toads” puts an end to the normalcy. And after the kids see tons of flora and fauna on the nature trail, lunch brings rain and mud, which is Shark Dog’s favorite! Afterward, the students pair up to find “something interesting,” many of them bringing their finds back to the group. (Shark Dog brings a branch still attached to a portion of trunk, in the hollow of which sits a perturbed owl.) But the big find (thanks to Shark Dog’s nose) is a bear cub trapped under a fallen tree. The group works together to free it (nothing is said about mama bear) and follows Shark Dog’s sniffer back to the bus. Adamson’s cartoony pencil-and-watercolor illustrations are bright, cheery, and busy, but the outdoor etiquette shown in them is not always spot-on (kids feed a squirrel from their lunches, for example), and the round white eyes of the wildlife give them a rather manic look. The narrator, Dad, and Ms. Ablett all present white.
This fantasy field trip is one kids are better off skipping. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-245718-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf.
A big, yellow hound dog has small, wonderful dreams.
Emma’s dreams are doggily simple. Rendered in gray, they manifest above her contentedly slumbering form: “singing, dancing, rolling in grass, splashing in water, going for walks,” and eating. After she wakes and eats, she naps again, sprawled on her back, tummy distended, the very picture of canine bliss. Pages turn, with Cooper’s lyrical text focusing on Emma and her sensations: “The days went on, shifting and taking shape, and now there were times when her whole body felt strange, but there was no stopping the days.” A gently curving line of overlapping Emmas, rising, stretching, scratching, shifting, and resettling, underscores time’s march. Adult readers may be anxious at this point, fearing Emma’s impending death with the page turn—but no, it turns out Emma’s been literally full of wonders, and she gazes mildly at a puppy emerging from her own body. Then there they are, seven little Emmas, and they now embody her dreams. Cooper’s brushy, loose watercolors, outlined in swoops of ink, complement his Emma-focused text. She resides in a human home, but her owner appears only as tan-skinned hands extending from the margin to offer a bowl of food, caress her snout, or towel off a pup. In this way, Cooper invites readers into Emma’s interiority, allowing them to sit quietly and wonder with her.
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884763
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history.
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night.
As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: “Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den.” Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose (“Velvet Nose”), a deer (“Tiny Hooves”), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant’s woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer’s turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: “This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin’s toasty. Blanket’s soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft.” The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures…if they can do so before the verses’ murmurous tempo closes their eyes.
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7063-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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