Clad in oversized glasses and purple flannels, Simone courageously takes on a succession of attackers. They all revert to...
A miserly set of badly designed interactive effects sinks this tale of an intrepid lad doing nightly battle with a green monster, a giant spider and other bedtime foes.
Clad in oversized glasses and purple flannels, Simone courageously takes on a succession of attackers. They all revert to toys or other domestic items each time his increasingly irritated mother looks in to settle him down, but in a twist at the end she dragoons them into cleaning up the mess next morning after the boy leaves for school. Buttons offer viewers either a straight up, no-audio reading or a “Watch” mode that still has no narration but adds appropriate sound effects and a short, non-repeatable animation to each page. Neither includes an auto-advance option. In “Watch” mode, a spread gesture will expand the watercolor cartoon illustration to full-screen size—but to no evident purpose, since the text then vanishes and the animation still doesn’t run more than once. The opening screen also offers an option to assign new names to every character, but the protagonist has to remain a boy since the names will change in the text but the pronouns don’t. Mercer Mayer set the standard for bedroom brangles long ago, though There's a Nightmare in My Closet, There's a Crocodile Under My Bed and the rest still haven’t made the transition to the digital domain.Pub Date: March 4, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Simiula
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
