Children will raise a loud cheer for this morning story.
Each day begins with riotous noise. Listen!
As sunrise’s gentle rays set the landscape ablaze, a new day is ushered in with a harmonious aural feast. Cue the ante-meridiem orchestra for the melodies of birdsong, yawning dogs, buzzing alarm clocks, clicking light switches, gurgling babies, whistling wind, crowing roosters, the cacophony of zooming traffic, and much more. This sweet, simple story will awaken young listeners’ imaginations to a world of early–a.m. wonders. The economic prose, occasionally rendered in rhyme and near rhyme, flows gently and well and will help kids happily recognize what goes on before and after they awaken. The book makes a fine springboard into laptime, classroom, and library-programming activities, as youngsters can be challenged to identify and/or illustrate morning noisemakers they’re familiar with in their homes and neighborhoods. Bold illustrations burst from the pages and are filled with eye-popping pinks, blues, yellows, greens, reds, purples, and other hues; pre-dawn dark colors lighten and dissipate as the day proceeds. People’s skin tones are primarily nonrealistic, though one woman is shown with dark-brown skin. A wonderful image accompanying the charming turn of phrase “Today is a melody still to be written, / today is a tune no one’s heard before” depicts a five-lined “staff” of electric wires with birds resembling musical notes perched upon them.
Children will raise a loud cheer for this morning story. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7993-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet and subtle book on sharing.
Rudy’s pink sweater is missing. Readers are invited to follow him as he searches for the sweater.
Rudy is a blue creature with a piggy snout, bunny ears, a thin, tufted tail, and a distraught look on his face. His beloved pink sweater is gone. “It was a bit too small and showed his belly button. But it was his favorite.” Where could it be? In a search that doubles as a countdown from 10 to one, Rudy makes his way through the different rooms of the house—top to bottom, inside and outside. As readers open the wardrobe door, “TEN tumbling cats” provide the first hint as to the sweater’s whereabouts. Following the pink yarn that runs across the pages, readers encounter some surprising creatures in each location—including a crocodile sitting in an outhouse busily knitting—as well as flaps to open and die cuts to peek through. Just as he’s about to give up hope—someone must’ve taken it, but “who would love wearing it as much as he did?”—the answer is revealed: “Trudy! His number ONE sister. The sweater fit her perfectly.” And, as is the nature of stories with a happy ending, Rudy gets a new sweater that fits him, from the knitting crocodile, of course. Plot, interactivity, vocabulary, and counting all contribute in making this an engaging book for the upper edge of the board-book range.
A sweet and subtle book on sharing. (Board book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3679-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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