All the photos are diverting, but the conceptual premise stumbles.
Pairs of bold, quirky photographs from varied locations illustrate contrasting concepts.
An aerial-photography specialist focuses on waterscapes, landscapes, and animals, sometimes unusually enhanced. Settings (named under each photo) include Bolivia, the Caribbean, the Pacific, Antarctica, and a hotel in Palm Springs, California, complete with fantastical animal inhabitants, previously featured in Malin’s Be Our Guest! (2018). The most intriguing photos are of llamas in Salar de Uyuni, a Bolivian salt flat. The woolly animals have traditional wool tassels hanging from their ears and, sometimes, quite untraditional large balloons surrounding their bodies. Two llamas, one black, one white, each covered in matching balloons, dominate the jacket. The spectacular large balloons show up again inside the book, where one llama with pink balloons stands opposite two others, also draped in pink. The intense blue sky, the white salt surface, and the pink balloons are striking, but the concept words “ALONE” and “TOGETHER” in embossed block capital letters across the photos’ middles distract from the strong visuals. Unfortunately this same layout is used throughout. While many coupled images artfully represent the simple concepts being introduced, others don’t work as well. Two flamingos labeled with the word “FEATHERS” are next to a tiger labeled “FUR.” An elephant surrounded by tall, balloon-festooned shrubs opposite a bunch of balloons rising in the salt flat, labeled “HEAVY” and “LIGHT,” respectively, is positively opaque.
All the photos are diverting, but the conceptual premise stumbles. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3970-5
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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