Exquisite.
Tapir’s courage and quiet steps show a leopard how to change his ways and avoid a human hunter.
This charming pourquoi tale is set in a Southeast Asian jungle where tapirs, rhinos, hornbills, apes, crocodiles, porcupines, and leopards coexist. Ably translated from the original Korean, the text is spare, gentle, and repetitive. “The leopard ran with loud, heavy steps. / THUD, THUD, THUD. / Tapir ran with soft, silent steps. / Hush, hush, hush.” In the art, created with watercolor, drawing ink, and marker pen, most animals have a distinctive color. Tapir is gray and white, while Little Tapir is a pleasing reddish brown. The jungle is more suggested than shown in these allusive images, reminiscent of Korean landscape paintings, and the figures and text both are set on an expanse of white. The placement of text and picture varies, sometimes together, sometimes opposed on a spread, but each spread is a self-contained idea until the climactic page turns of the leopard attack. The pacing is perfect. There is humor in the tiptoeing animals, the dancing rhinoceros and elephant, and Little Tapir’s dream of a birthday mud cake, but it is gentle, befitting the overall quiet tone of this appealing import.
Exquisite. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3395-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
A charming tale of an athlete who may not steal any bases but who will certainly steal readers’ hearts.
Ohtani, pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, teams up with Blank and Liem to tell the story of how his dog, Decoy, threw out a ceremonial first pitch.
It’s a big day! Decoy leaps “off the bed. Then back onto the bed. Then off the bed.” The enthusiastic pup heads outside to practice with his lucky baseball but is quickly distracted by squirrels (“we’ll play later!”), airplanes (“flyin’ high!”), and flowers (“smell ya soon!”). Dog and pitcher then head to the ballpark. In the locker room, Decoy high-paws Shohei’s teammates. It’s nearly time! But as Shohei prepares to warm up, Decoy realizes that he’s forgotten something important: his lucky ball. Without it, there will be “no championships, no parades, and no hot dogs!” Back home he goes, returning just in time. With Shohei at the plate, Decoy runs from the mound to his owner, rolling the ball into Shohei’s mitt for a “Striiiiike!” Related from a dog’s point of view, Ohtani and Blank’s energetic text lends the tale a sense of urgency and suspense. Liem’s illustrations capture the excitement of the first day of baseball season and the joys of locker room camaraderie, as well as Shohei and Decoy’s mutual affection—even when the ball is drenched in slobber, Shohei’s love for his pet shines through, and clearly, Decoy is focused when it matters.
A charming tale of an athlete who may not steal any bases but who will certainly steal readers’ hearts. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780063460775
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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
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