More than a bedtime story: a treat from a masterful artist.
A little girl falls asleep—clutching her picture book and her stuffed-animal hen—and a joyous, wordless adventure unfolds.
Before the page showing the sleeping, light-skinned girl, there is a double-page spread with a wide expanse of green grass, over which layers of brush-stroked blues show the start of a starry night. There are simple structures: a doghouse with a large tail sticking out, a henhouse with a hen inside, and a turquoise-blue house, where the girl sleeps. Her house has a caribou weathervane. All the animals on that page recur in the next double-page spread: the dog on the book cover; the hen as her toy; the caribou as a lamp. The girl seems to become the dog as a giant, furry form leaves behind an empty bed and leaps out the window in the next tableau. Dog, caribou, and hen move through the darkening night, find a golden orb in the sky, and eventually give it new purpose. There is no danger lurking in this dreamlike tale; all is sweet whimsy. The stylized, brightly colored animals are friendly and cooperative, figuring out together how to access the tantalizing star. It is hard to choose a favorite among the illustrations, which use composition, form, and color to full advantage to animate the three animals and spin a magical tale.
More than a bedtime story: a treat from a masterful artist. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55498-841-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Strange giants, sing-song rhymes and generic psychological advice don’t add up to a soothing bedtime read.
This odd compendium of story, song lyrics and advice to parents misses the mark as a prescription for sweet dreams.
The beginning and ending scenes focus on a little boy who is having difficulty getting to sleep. He concentrates on counting imaginary giants as a way to relax, enumerating groups of different giants from a pair up to six and then back down to another pair of huge creatures, shown with just their feet sticking out from a red blanket. The rhyming text in these sequences is quite sing-song and doesn’t scan well, possibly as a result of having been translated from the original German. The giants themselves have an eerie, nightmarish quality in the illustrations, which are done in a loose, cartoonlike style in watercolor and pencil. The activities of the giants are nonsensical, as in a dream, showing them on rooftops or coming out of a huge watering can. The words to a song are also provided, urging “happy thoughts” and repeated deep breathing, though there is no music included, and the words don’t readily transfer to a familiar melody. Two pages of advice to parents on getting children to sleep finish it off.
Strange giants, sing-song rhymes and generic psychological advice don’t add up to a soothing bedtime read. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4338-0950-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hillenbrand introduces the idea of rebuses to newly emergent readers with a gathering of likely-to-be-familiar Mother Goose rhymes—from “Hey diddle, diddle, / the [cat] and the [fiddle]” to “Twinkle, twinkle, little [star].” To make the translations ultra-easy, he provides literal visual interpretations for each rhyme in good-humored cartoon scenes featuring smiling people or animals, generally in country dress and settings. (He moderates verisimilitude for the audience appropriately: Jill’s fallen male companion and Humpty Dumpty are unhappy after their accidents but plainly not grievously injured.) He even labels the relevant figures, all of whom or which are larger versions of the rebuses: “cake,” “baker’s man” and “baby,” for instance, or “hill,” “pail,” “water” and “crown (another word for top of head).” As a technique for promoting visual and verbal literacy at once this game has a good track record, and young audiences put off by the crudely illustrated likes of Blanche Fisher Wright’s Real Mother Goose Picture Word Rhymes (1916, 1987) or the much older Mother Goose in Hieroglyphics (1849, 1973) will both enjoy and benefit from this shorter but more child-friendly outing. (Nursery rhymes. 3-5)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7614-5808-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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