``Five little ducks went swimming one day, Over the hills and far away,'' but when Mother duck calls, only four come back. So it goes, in this simple, repetitive tale, until just one is left; luckily, that one is smart enough to open the door of the shed where the fox has put the others and let them out. The story isn't strong on logic, but it makes an appealing counting book with many chances to enumerate the ducklings, spot the fox, and anticipate the outcome. Beck's pen and watercolor illustrations are clean and bright, suggesting real streams and jaunty ducks, yet with the popular appeal of cartoons. (Picture book. 1-5)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8050-2525-1
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more...
Following on the successful Five Little Pumpkins (2003), Yaccarino teams with Rabe for bunnies.
The five pastel bunnies are cute enough, and the rhymes are accurate, if somewhat wordy for toddlers. But without a clear one-to-one relationship between the words and the pictures, it is not always clear which bunny is speaking and what is being counted. The bunnies, identified as first, second, and so on, hop around the pages instead of staying in a consistent order as the rhyme implies. Naming them by color might have been a better choice, but that would mean abandoning the finger-play counting-rhyme formula. The children who show up to hunt the eggs are a multicultural cast of cartoonish figures with those in the background drawn as blue and green silhouettes. Though the text on the back cover invites children to count the eggs, there is no hint as to how many eggs they should find. Neither the verse nor the pictures provide counting assistance. The youngest children will not care about any of this; they will be content to point out the different colors of the bunnies and the patterns on the eggs.
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more satisfying but fragile classic, Pat the Bunny. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225339-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HarperFestival
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amiable if slight.
In a text that can be sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” a young dinosaur plays with other prehistoric friends and gets ready for bed.
In this companion piece to Twinkle, Twinkle Unicorn (2019), each double-page spread features a friendly, green theropod with rosy cheeks watching pink pterosaurs fly, using a sauropod’s tail as a sliding board, and watching volcanoes explode in the night sky. As the sun sets, the dinosaur yawns and heads back home to two larger dinosaurs, one pink with eyelashes and one blue without, who appear to be mama and papa dinosaur respectively (did color stereotyping based on gender exist 65 million years ago? And why isn’t the protagonist dinosaur mauve?). Waring has arguably created the most benign and affable dinosaurs possible, with their perpetual smiles, rounded horns and teeth, oversized eyes, and brightly colored hides. Weighing in at only a slight 16 pages, the book runs through two modified verses of the classic, and the first scans quite fluidly. The second stanza feels a little forced to make it fit into the bedtime theme: “Twinkle, twinkle dinosaur, / the day is done. / It’s time to snore.”
Amiable if slight. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: May 28, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3975-7
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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