The exclamation begs for read-alouds and invites children from Oklahoma or Alabama to try out their best New York accents...
New to city living, Swanda (olive-skinned and espresso-haired) installs a feeding station on her fire escape, unaware of the teeming, cooing hordes that will instantly (and incessantly) descend from the skies, leaving their marks on the neighbors and sidewalks below.
Readers come face to beak with Swanda’s predicament in a startling double-page spread: a sea of birds, feathers, and yellow marble eyes. The freaky flock advances, unblinking, right off the page, bobbing dumbly in that mildly unnerving, pugilistic pigeon-y fashion. Vibrant pastels describe both multitudes of pigeon grays and also the vibrancy of city life, saturated with colors, cultures, accents, and activities. Expansive full-bleed spreads capture both urban density and verticality. Buildings, brickwork, and wry sidewalk vignettes fill both pages and readers’ imaginations. Swanda’s neighbors, with their beards, hair rollers, smiles, admonitions, dogs, pearls, cat’s-eye glasses, and bowler, Rastafarian, and Hasidic hats, are what people might call real New Yorkers, who together represent an articulate, authentic vision of an interconnected city. Their resounding, choral shout up to her apartment window comes booming in the delightful local dialect: “SWANDA, YOU GOTTA STOP FEEDIN’ DA BOIDS!”
The exclamation begs for read-alouds and invites children from Oklahoma or Alabama to try out their best New York accents and for a minute feel part of the big city. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77138-613-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
While the slapstick may appeal to readers, sadly, this book is so confused and arbitrary, most of the humor falls flat.
A beleaguered giraffe tries to communicate that he isn’t a chair.
Poor Giraffe: on his first day in the jungle he’s seen as a chair by the other animals. Of course, giraffes aren’t actually found in jungles, and there’s little evidence of a jungle in the illustrations. While Giraffe does look a little like a chair, the fact that he has eyes and a mouth and nose and other features that distinguish the other animals from their seats makes it hard to understand why he is mistaken for a chair. But it’s all about the gag. Burach uses action-filled spreads to indicate a series of incidents that literally impede Giraffe’s speech, but when he is finally able to speak up for himself, he chooses instead to make a fake chair that looks like him. When that doesn’t work, he’s taken home by a dull-witted human who also uses him for a chair. Upon escaping, he is used as a chair by a lion waiting for dinner. When Giraffe finally decides to speak up and clear up the misunderstanding, he saves his own skin by scaring the lion, who thinks he’s a talking chair. The childlike drawings emphasize googly eyes, silly grins, a multitude of sound effects in emphatic display type, and lots of physical humor.
While the slapstick may appeal to readers, sadly, this book is so confused and arbitrary, most of the humor falls flat. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-236016-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his...
It’s a wonderful day in the jungle, so why’s Jim Panzee so grumpy?
When Jim woke up, nothing was right: "The sun was too bright, the sky was too blue, and bananas were too sweet." Norman the gorilla asks Jim why he’s so grumpy, and Jim insists he’s not. They meet Marabou, to whom Norman confides that Jim’s grumpy. When Jim denies it again, Marabou points out that Jim’s shoulders are hunched; Jim stands up. When they meet Lemur, Lemur points out Jim’s bunchy eyebrows; Jim unbunches them. When he trips over Snake, Snake points out Jim’s frown…so Jim puts on a grimacelike smile. Everyone has suggestions to brighten his mood: dancing, singing, swinging, swimming…but Jim doesn’t feel like any of that. He gets so fed up, he yells at his animal friends and stomps off…then he feels sad about yelling. He and Norman (who regrets dancing with that porcupine) finally just have a sit and decide it’s a wonderful day to be grumpy—which, of course, makes them both feel a little better. Suzanne Lang’s encouragement to sit with your emotions (thus allowing them to pass) is nearly Buddhist in its take, and it will be great bibliotherapy for the crabby, cranky, and cross. Oscar-nominated animator Max Lang’s cartoony illustrations lighten the mood without making light of Jim’s mood; Jim has comically long arms, and his facial expressions are quite funny.
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his journey. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-53786-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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