Budding engineers of any species will agree that Oona has well earned the right to feel “just as big as a duck should feel.”...
A farmyard duck who’s not built for speed finds a way to win the morning race down to the pond.
Being big of chest and stubby of leg, Oona stands no chance against her three slimmer, longer-limbed fellow ducks in the morning rush. “Last is a blot on my life,” she kvetches to her friend Roy the frog. “I don’t feel as big as a duck should feel.” But, as Roy reminds her, she is “good with gizmos,” and maybe, just maybe she could concoct something to give her that needed boost? Good with gizmos she proves to be, and though the wobbly cart and the workout machine she cobbles together from unlikely assortments of junk stored in the shed fail to fill the bill, a climactic inspiration involving laundry, a basket, and a launch from the barn’s roof really puts the wind beneath her wings (so to speak). Soon Bim, Bam, Bop, and even Roy are asking for rides. Martin tells the tale in rollicking cadences just right for reading aloud—”A gust of wind grabbed the sails and up she went. OOO-hoolie-hoo!”—and with fine comic flair Day sets the (more or less) naturalistically depicted tinkerer, every feather bristling with concentration, amid enticing jumbles of pulleys, ropes, and buckets of detritus.
Budding engineers of any species will agree that Oona has well earned the right to feel “just as big as a duck should feel.” (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-15179-0395-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Resembling a younger Harry Potter more than a little in Robertson’s technically accomplished, though flatly uninspired paintings, a lad finds an immense egg in the hen house one morning, and dutifully takes on parental duties for the dragon that hatches out of it. Though the dragon, a big, awkward-looking creature with green bat wings and warty, outsized hind legs, splatters flames and swoops about with dog-like enthusiasm, nothing is ever damaged, no one is ever hurt—not even the neighborhood “maiden” who is tied to a post for the “damsel in distress” lesson. Robertson doesn’t even try to solve various logistical problems, such as how the egg was transported through visibly-too-small doors and windows to the boy’s bedroom, the three panels depicting a mock battle between boy and dragon are confusingly out of sequence, and though the dragon is supposed to be roaring in the final scene, his mouth is closed. Even the dragon’s search for home is a sort of ho-hum affair. A distinct waste next to such kindred books as Jerdine Nolen’s Raising Dragons (1998) and Rod Clement’s Just Another Ordinary Day (1997). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2546-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
From McDonald (Tundra Mouse, 1997, etc.), a haunting, dramatic glimpse of the Bone Keeper, a trickster with special transformational powers. Some say Bone Woman is a ghost; some envision her with three heads that view past, present, and future simultaneously. Most, however, call her the “Skeleton Maker” or “Keeper of Bones.” Chanting, shaking, moaning, and wailing, the Bone Keeper is frenzied as she sorts bones; not until the end of the book are readers told, in murmuring lines of free verse, what the Bone Keeper is creating in her mysterious desert cave. Out of the darkness, a wolf springs to life, leaps from the cave, howling, a symbol of resurrection and proof of life’s cyclical nature. Also keeping readers guessing as to the Bone Keeper’s final creation are Karas’s paintings; they, too, require that the final piece of the puzzle be placed before all are understood. The coloring and textures embody the desert setting in the evening, showing the fearsome cave and sandy shadows that wait to release the mystery of the bones. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7894-2559-9
Page Count: 30
Publisher: DK Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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