Pleasant and heartwarming but with somewhat sluggish illustrations.
A picture book about a lost puppy’s adventure, ultimately finding friends and home.
Harry, a tiny puppy, is brought to the park by his best friend, Emma. Overexcited, he chases after a ball and then is himself chased by two large dogs. Escaping them, he becomes lost. A friendly stray cat named Ginger leads him back to the park, but darkness has fallen, and Emma is gone. Ginger leads Harry to town, where, as they are raiding garbage cans in an alley for dinner, a large cat threatens Ginger. Tiny Harry finds his voice and barks, scaring it away. Then Harry smells home, and the two friends make their way there. Reunited with Emma, Harry remembers Ginger, and the final illustration shows both Harry and Ginger on Emma’s lamp, fed and warm and home. The simple story is heartwarming, especially for animal lovers, and the final double-page spread is a treasure. But too many of the other illustrations lack a liveliness of line, so successfully rendered in Marc Simont’s lost-dog story, The Stray Dog (2001). Readers will appreciate the clever endpapers, but they may puzzle over the title page illustration, which shows the puppy ensconced in its round, safe bed—positioned center page (a design placement of stability)—with no hint of any tension to come.
Pleasant and heartwarming but with somewhat sluggish illustrations. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84895-909-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A handsome edition of an old favorite.
The familiar cumulative game is played by four children, along with their father and their dog, at the typically British beach pictured on the lovely, expansive first endpaper.
The children's real activities are shown in b&w drawings; the imaginative doings appear in full color. Although some of the color pages show perfectly possible events, most are clearly fantasy, suggesting just how close the two may be in children's minds. The family ends up in safe retreat in one big cozy bed; the bear is seen--on the second essential, beautiful endpaper--headed into a gloomy sea. Oxenbury's splendid watercolors and drawings perfectly evoke both landscape and the members of the questing family.
A handsome edition of an old favorite. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1989
ISBN: 978-0-689-50476-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: McElderry
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1989
A zany, rib-tickling bedtime tour de force.
Eschewing sleep, the froggies engage in bizarre nighttime capers.
This unusual bedtime book alerts readers with the bold opening message that “the froggies do NOT want to sleep.” Indeed! Instead, the froggies want to hop. Reasonable. They also want to practice the accordion, ride unicycles, and play dress up! Hmmm? They want to go on long country drives and “joust like knights.” OK. And they want to perform underwater ballet and “tame ferocious beasties”! Really? Pushing the envelope totally, the froggies want to sing opera while being shot from a cannon, fly spaceships, and engage in burping contests with ETs. But they absolutely do not want to sleep…maybe. Beginning with the froggies’ surreptitious exit from bed on the front endpapers, the realistically executed, fantastically conceived illustrations track the froggies’ nocturnal activities from the sublime to the ridiculous in a series of increasingly dramatic double-page spreads. Early images show leggy amphibians tiptoeing across the page before exuberantly hopping frogs jam-pack the spread. Hilarious scenes of frogs playing accordions, spinning on unicycles, dressing up in period costumes, speeding like Mr. Toad in a flashy red roadster, aerially jousting with toilet plungers, performing ballet lifts underwater, riding a submerged alligator (backward), operatically exploding from a cannon, and zipping through galaxies in a spaceship appropriately culminate on the rear endpapers with the exhausted froggies finally crashing into bed.
A zany, rib-tickling bedtime tour de force. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-58089-524-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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