This pleasant, rhyming story was first published in Switzerland, adapted from a children’s poem that describes several animals working together to alert all the rabbits that Easter is coming.
In the introductory pages, Mr. Croak the raven flies down to tell Vicki Vole that Easter is coming. She spruces up for the holiday “as all good creatures do” and then sets off to find her friend Rob Rabbit. He appears to be in bed recovering from a cold, but he bounds up and takes off in a hurry to spread the news to the other rabbits about Easter’s impending arrival. The final spread shows several rabbits at a distance romping across a green field with tiny eggs just visible hidden among the spring flowers. Mr. Croak and Vicki Vole enjoy a cup of tea together as one rabbit approaches them with baskets of decorated eggs. The story could not be much slighter, and the rhymes are sometimes a little sing-song, but the pleasant, cheery tone of the text is matched by soft-focus illustrations in bright, jewel tones against azure blue skies.
A jovial, sunny story with a slightly unusual interpretation of the role of rabbits in Easter celebrations. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4070-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Why have fairy tales lasted so long? Maybe it’s because they change with every teller.
It takes surprisingly little effort to turn the Three Little Pigs into superheroes. The Big Bad Wolf basically started out as a supervillain, with the ability to blow a house down, and the pigs had to perform spectacular feats to outwit him. In this picture book, the wolf, locked in the Happily Never After tower, devises a plot to escape. Using rotten eggs and spicy ginger, he creates the Gingerbread Man, who makes his way to a baking contest where the three pigs and other fairy-tale characters are competing to win the key to the city. The Gingerbread Man grabs the key, and not even superhero pigs are fast enough to catch him, but with their secret weapon—mustard (which one of the pigs also uses to bake cookies)—they save the day. The morals: Evil never triumphs, and mustard cookies are delicious. The book’s charm is in the details. There are splotches of mustard on the cookies featured on the endpapers, and a sly-looking mouse is hiding on many of the pages. The story even manages to include more than a dozen fairy-tale figures without seeming frenzied. Evans’ use of shading is so skillful that it almost seems possible to reach out and touch the characters. Most of the human characters are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Superheroes, and readers, will live happily-ever-after. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-68221-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A sugary poem, very loosely based on the familiar song, lacks focus.
Using only the refrain from the original (“One love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right!”), the reggae great’s daughter Cedella Marley sees this song as her “happy song” and adapts it for children. However, the adaptation robs it of life. After the opening lines, readers familiar with the original song (or the tourism advertisement for Jamaica) will be humming along only to be stopped by the bland lines that follow: “One love, what the flower gives the bee.” and then “One love, what Mother Earth gives the tree.” Brantley-Newton’s sunny illustrations perfectly reflect the saccharine quality of the text. Starting at the beginning of the day, readers see a little girl first in bed, under a photograph of Bob Marley, the sun streaming into her room, a bird at the window. Each spread is completely redundant—when the text is about family love, the illustration actually shows little hearts floating from her parents to the little girl. An image of a diverse group getting ready to plant a community garden, walking on top of a river accompanies the words “One love, like the river runs to the sea.”
Though this celebration of community is joyful, there just is not much here. (afterword) (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4521-0224-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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