The seventh in a line of verse math-terpieces that began with Grapes of Math (2001), this offers 16 problem-solving shortcuts that involve grouping numbers or items. Tang not only provides answers and methods in a closing key, he is generous with hints. Opposite digitally worked, color-coded arrays of anywhere from 30 to 148 stars, sea shells, spiders, pickles, the titular potatoes, playing cards and the like, his verses open with a pair of lively introductory couplets, set the problem with a third, then suggest an approach in the fourth: “Can you add up these poor souls / For whom the bell already tolls? / In groups of ten you’ll hear their cries, / ‘Please don’t turn us into fries!’ ” Even numerically challenged readers can count on coming away with some time and labor saving techniques for toting things up. (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)
Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-439-44390-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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A dozen familiar dinosaurs introduce themselves in verse in this uninspired, if colorful, new animal gallery from the authors of Commotion in the Ocean (2000). Smiling, usually toothily, and sporting an array of diamonds, lightning bolts, spikes and tiger stripes, the garishly colored dinosaurs make an eye-catching show, but their comments seldom measure up to their appearance: “I’m a swimming reptile, / I dive down in the sea. / And when I spot a yummy squid, / I eat it up with glee!” (“Ichthyosaurus”) Next to the likes of Kevin Crotty’s Dinosongs (2000), illustrated by Kurt Vargo, or Jack Prelutsky’s classic Tyrannosaurus Was A Beast (1988), illustrated by Arnold Lobel, there’s not much here to roar about. (Picture book/poetry. 7-9)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-58925-044-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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“Little boy blue / come blow your tuba. / The sheep are in Venice, / and the cow’s in Aruba.” Pairing frenetic and garishly colored art to familiar rhymes in “more modern, more fresh, and well…more Goosian” versions, Seibold stakes out Stinky Cheese Man territory to introduce “Jack and Jill / and a pickle named Bill,” the Old Woman Who Lived in a Sneaker (“She had a great big stereo speaker”), Peter Pumpkin Pickle Pepper and about two dozen more “re-nurseried” figures. Against patterned or spray-painted backgrounds, an entire page of umbrella-carrying raindrops float down, a bunch of mice run up (“the clock struck one; / the rest had fun”), cats fiddle for Old King Coal and others, Jack B. Nimble makes a lifelong career out of demonstrating his one trick and a closing rendition of the counting rhyme “One, Two, I Lost My Shoe” is transformed into a clever reprise as many of the characters return to take final bows. Sparkles on the cover; chuckles (despite some lame rhyming) throughout. (Fractured nursery rhymes. 7-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8118-6882-2
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010
Categories: CHILDREN'S POETRY
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