Count on other retellings for the fractured–fairy-tale shelf.
The three little pigs take on math.
As the title indicates, the story overtly embeds math content in its text. First, one mother pig cuts two apples in half so that she and her three children can have a snack, but since they’re still hungry, she sends them off to seek their fortunes. The first two pigs acquire their respective, traditional building materials, with the text identifying five bundles of hay to build a cylindrical hut and six sticks (and some sheets) to build a conical teepee. The wolf’s huffing and puffing gives both pigs time to escape, and it also apparently slows him down enough that the third pig has time to reject various materials—seven baskets of wool, eight bags of leaves, nine boxes of rose petals, 10 pails of peanuts—until he finds someone (the Gingerbread Man) selling bricks and buys 100 for a bunkerlike house in the shape of a cube. After failing to huff and puff this house down, the wolf becomes a vegetarian, and the pigs gather in the brick house for dinner. A few extra pages prompt readers to revisit the shapes and numbers from the story, but these feel superfluous to the book rather than integral and enriching. Digital art cleverly incorporates metafictive references but is otherwise undistinguished.
Count on other retellings for the fractured–fairy-tale shelf. (Math picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7901-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet, springtime-themed reworking of a beloved tale.
The classic picture book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989) gets a makeover for Easter as the letters of the alphabet locate and decorate eggs.
The mission is simple: “Chicka chicka peek peek. / Everybody seek seek! / Find all the eggs / in the pretty pink tree.” The letters are making their way up the flowering tree in search of the hidden eggs when a “SNEEZE!” scatters everyone and the eggs fall and crack. Luckily, a bunny hops by with a haul of new ones, which the letters then paint and bedazzle, eventually sharing the newly decorated eggs with a group of bunnies. This picture book is a successfully Easter-fied version of the original: The letters go up; the letters fall down. Truly, though, that’s all the preschool crowd needs. Chung’s illustrations are simple and familiar, a direct echo of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. The letters appear in colorful, bold, block form. The book has few added details, just focal images like the tree and its pink flowers, the colorful eggs, tufts of grass, and some friendly rabbits. The alphabet appears in order (both upper- and lowercase letters) at the book’s open and close. The rhyming text follows the iconic cadence of the source material, making for a worthy read-aloud that will keep little hands turning pages.
A sweet, springtime-themed reworking of a beloved tale. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9781665990646
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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