Whimsical verse marries curious art in a second collaboration by Lewis and Desimini (Doodle Dandies, 1998). A succession of animals including a flamingo, a dragon, a cowbird, and a pair of hippos suggest their abodes of choice in playful verses replete with puns and internal rhymes. “ ‘Here’s what to do: Read slowly, chew / Delicious books, all ages,’ ” / The Bookworm said, “ ‘but make your bed / With sheets of picture pages.’ ” Desimini’s collages, constructed by scanning images of all kinds of fabrics, textures, and pictures, will inspire scrutiny to detect their sources. An endnote reveals some secrets (the fact that the dragon’s scaly tail and shingled tower are made from Popsicle sticks, for example), while other image sources (coconuts, feathers, and a pincushion for the porcupine’s house) are more easily observed. Sly details abound. A cowbird’s home is a “Branch/Ranch,” complete with miniature black and white cows, while the polar bear’s ice house with “central air” contains fish within its frozen walls. Although some of the verses are uninspired (“into” rhyming with “into”), others delight, such as, “Perfectly porpoisely, / Porpoises purposely / Surf through the windows and / Leap through the door.” (Picture book/poetry. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83161-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Anne Schwartz/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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