by Geoffrey Hayes & illustrated by Geoffrey Hayes ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
The popular and Geisel Award–winning mouse sibs (Benny and Penny in the Big No-No!, 2009) meet their greatest challenge yet when hard-playing, toy-breaking cousin Bo saunters over for a visit. Ignoring their efforts to stonewall him, Bo aggressively messes up the sandbox, snatches Benny’s homemade treasure map away and generally makes a nuisance of himself while sneering “Oh, are you going to tell your Mommy?” Eventually the tables turn when Bo needs help getting un-stuck from a hole in the fence, and by the end he shows preliminary signs of acquiring better socialization skills. All three furry playmates sport eloquent eyebrows and other easy-to-spot emotional markers in Hayes’s sunny backyard scenes—and even prereaders may note that when toys get broken here, it’s while Benny or Penny are trying to grab them out of Bo’s hands. A thought-provoking episode just right for the I Can Read set. (Graphic early reader. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-935179-07-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: RAW Junior/TOON Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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by Antoinette Portis & illustrated by Antoinette Portis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 2006
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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by Katherine Pryor & illustrated by Anna Raff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 6, 2012
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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