Having always enjoyed “Roquefort and Beaufort and Blarney and blue. Romano, parmigiano, and Waterloo too” with her rodent buddies Horace and Morris, Dolores is considerably bummed when she develops an allergy to cheese. Though her mom tries to help by supplying cookies and peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch, soon Dolores is dreaming of cheese, seeing it everywhere (“Muenster Movie Madness,” screams the local theater marquee; “Dr. Cheddar and Mr. Hyde”) and even backsliding despite instant, itchy hives. What to do? Walrod’s witty pictures add both visual and plot detail, with scenes of Dolores breaking out as Horace and Morris look on in dismay, visiting Dr. Ricotta for testing (more a generic physical exam than an allergy series) and struggling to stay with her new diet. What turns the corner at last is her discovery that she actively enjoys concocting her own creative, cheeseless meals. Proactive readers with similar troubles may find her strategy successful. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: July 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-689-83940-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2009
Well worth a waddle.
An invitation to younger children to act like Adélie penguins.
Morales’ cartoon illustrations alternating with nature photos place a racially diverse group of young folks in cool-weather dress amid flocks of the diminutive penguins. Markle not only offers observations about penguin behavior but also urges readers to squawk, sled, waddle, take “power naps,” “fly through the ocean,” and leap away from predators right alongside them. Sidestepping the topic of reproduction requires an awkward hop. The author’s “Adélie pairs regularly gift [nesting] pebbles to each other” is misleadingly restated in the adjacent box as “When you live with penguins you will gift pebbles to your best friends.” And no grown-up is going to thank her for this cheerfully suggestive line: “Hungry Adélie chicks call nonstop until a parent finds them and feeds them.” Still, such playful suggestions are certainly child-friendly, and the series premise continues to artfully entice audiences to exercise both bodies and minds for insights into the world of nature—readers will especially enjoy the idea of tobogganing down a snowy slope like a penguin. Fans of the creators’ Could You Ever Dive With Dolphins?! (2023) will be pleased. A closing page of additional facts includes aerial images of Antarctica in summer and winter.
Well worth a waddle. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781338858792
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises.
Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.
Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-30935-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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