Heart-deep comfort for children of deployed soldiers, with resplendent illustrations.
Papa has gone for a soldier, and in poetic language, a bear cub imagines going along.
Drifting into rhyme and out again the young narrator explains the situation thus, with an artfully placed page turn in the middle: “My Papa is a soldier, and sometimes soldiers go… / away for a while, to help for a while, so I can stay and play.” But wouldn’t it be fine to ride in Papa’s backpack, to be together all the time, “Me and my Papa, papa-papa-pa”? Like the narrative, the imagery in Carroll’s richly variegated, semiabstract art is full of oblique and affecting references. Between before-and-after scenes of a bear cub and an adult in a generic uniform jacket playing amid grass and flowers, a row of silhouetted animals carrying spearlike twigs march through barren country beneath a hot sun and then turn to face a lowering, bird-shaped black cloud. As the figures wave their sticks at the cloud, the language turns even more suggestive, if less childlike (“We’d feel the sting, the twisted wind. We’d taste the angry rain”). But then the desert storm is transformed to sunlight, the skies clear, and with a repetition of the opening lines, the two ursine travelers, exchanging loving kisses, make their way home.
Heart-deep comfort for children of deployed soldiers, with resplendent illustrations. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-58536-613-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note.
Little Honey Bunny Funnybunny loves baseball almost as much as she loves her big brother P.J.—though it’s a close-run thing.
Readers familiar with the pranks P.J. plays on his younger sibling in older episodes of the series (most illustrated by Roger Bollen) will be amused—and perhaps a little confused—to see him in the role of perfect big brother after meeting his swaddled little sister for the first time in mama’s lap. But here, along with being a constant companion and “always happy to see her,” he cements his heroic status in her eyes by hitting a home run for his baseball team and then patiently teaching her how to play T-ball. After carefully coaching her and leading her through warm-up exercises, he even sits in the stands, loudly cheering her on as she scores the winning run in her own very first game. “‘You are the best brother a bunny could ever have!’” she burbles. This tale’s a tad blander compared with others centered on P.J. and his sister, but it’s undeniably cheery, with text well structured for burgeoning readers. The all-smiles animal cast in Bowers’ cartoon art features a large and diversely hued family of bunnies sporting immense floppy ears as well as a multispecies crowd of furry onlookers equally varied of color, with one spectator in a wheelchair.
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217032464
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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