A silly, hollow and ultimately unsatisfying tale.
A sloppy story about an obese cat that helps two people find each other and fall in love.
This app from the Netherlands (which can be read in English, German or Dutch) is apparently a digital adaptation of a previously published picture book. Dan and his young daughter Rose have a problem. Their corpulent cat is so fat he won’t budge from the sofa. The British-accented narrator explains, “Rose would come over and tickle his botty [sic] / so the cat could sit up and pee in a potty.” The gigantic cat lifts his rear end over the arm of the couch and urinates in a bowl a held by Rose (a bit much for the intended preschool audience). Dan takes the couch to a secondhand store (cat and all); the owner, Ann, becomes rich and famous due to the cat; Dan and Ann end up meeting and fall in love on the spot. Many of the rhymes are a stretch (night/cried, for example), and the story line is so precipitous, slapdash and incongruous it’s difficult to embrace, making one wonder if a lot got lost in translation (which is uncredited). Touch-activated animations are minimal and do little to nothing to drive the story. On the positive side, illustrations are crisp, and navigation is smooth, but neither asset is enough to save this app from the “skip it” pile.
A silly, hollow and ultimately unsatisfying tale. (iPad storybook app. 4-7)Pub Date: March 25, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Orange Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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