The runaway cookie in this Mexican bakery is a soft, brown, stubby-tailed piglet as impertinently bold and smug in his continual escape as his Gingerbread Boy cousin. “Chase me! Chase me down the street. But this is one piggy you won’t get to eat! / ¡Córrele, córrele! ¡Y Córrele más! ¡Soy el cochinito que jamás comerás!” This bouncy dual refrain extends the familiar cumulative text, rendered in both English and Spanish, as piggy manages to elude Marta the baker, Lorenzo the mechanic, Mamá Nita the beautician, Joaquín the telephone repairman and a host of other neighborhood adults—until he is outsmarted by Rosa, a little girl on her way to school, who foxily “helps him” cross the street. Safely tucked into her backpack, piggy is both a welcome surprise and an excuse for Rosa’s lateness to class. Deep opaque acrylic paintings of a colorful barrio and its residents in pursuit add the right amount of cultural flavor to this vivid Latino retelling. Recipe appended. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-55885-586-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
Mr. Fish’s fans can chase away any holiday “dreary-wearies” with this latest entry in the series, though it’s more likely to...
The perennially popular pout-pout fish is back with a new problem: how to find perfect gifts for all his friends.
Mr. Fish wears a “yuletide pout” in this holiday season because of his extensive shopping expectations. He wants his gifts to have “bling-zing,” to be big, bright, and perfect, “guaranteed to bring delight.” He shops till he plops but leaves the mall empty-handed “in a bout of pout-doubt.” His wise friend Miss Shimmer saves the day, with lots of craft supplies and advice about how to make his own presents “with his very own fins!” Mr. Fish finds that his simple, handmade gifts do meet his high expectations and that the camaraderie and goodwill shared with friends are the really meaningful gifts of the season. In addition to the wordplay, the text offers a calming, sensible approach to holiday gift giving with reinforcement of the value of handmade gifts. Hanna’s detailed illustrations of Mr. Fish’s watery world are filled with funny details, as when the sea creatures all hold one another’s tentacles as they celebrate the holiday. A holiday highlight is the arrival of Manta Claus, pulled in his sleigh by sea horses, of course.
Mr. Fish’s fans can chase away any holiday “dreary-wearies” with this latest entry in the series, though it’s more likely to be adults who face the holiday shopping quandary than children. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-35549-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Engaging, rewarding, and utterly delightful.
Readers count from one to 10 and then jump from there to 15, 20, and 25 in this picture book featuring creatures in the wild.
Animals and their babies take the stage in this paper-engineered tale that allows young readers to make surprise discoveries. On the first spread, they meet a bat. Lift up the precisely die-cut bat’s wing to see “1 baby / Holding on tight as they fly through the night.” Page turns are propelled by the query that concludes each and every spread: “Who has more babies than that?” Continuing to count upward, readers meet leopard cubs, owlets, fox kits, leverets, caterpillars, and many more animals. Creatively designed flaps and die cuts, as well as pages with nontraditional trims, invite young hands to lift, peek, and search: Lift leaf-shaped flaps to see “8 baby mice”; peek through tree-trunk–shaped die cuts to see a forest with “15 poults”; and turn pages shaped like verdant hills to see “2 lambs.” The rhymes are unfussy, pleasingly rhythmic, and have unfailingly flawless meter (“9 ducklings / Swimming and snacking, / Practicing quacking”). Richly colored illustrations in vivid crimson, sapphire, marble green, and copper hues feature realistic animals in their natural habitats, though most are given sleek, wide, stylized eyes. The final spread throws readers a curveball with “LOTS of spiderlings,” depicted as die-cut holes with eight legs each on the previous page—and, it turns out, many of the pages before that.
Engaging, rewarding, and utterly delightful. (Picture book/novelty. 3-6)Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-32453-0
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
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