A roar-ing good time!
What to do when you suddenly find yourself turned into a dino?
Rory is having the weirdest week ever. It starts off normally: He’s psyched about a new update to his favorite online game but arrives late to school despite his mum’s best efforts. Then he gets in trouble when he falls asleep in class, which leads to a panic attack—a common occurrence due to his ADHD, which he takes in stride (“Just a glitch,” as he tells his friends). That night, his mum serves him “dinosaur pie” for dinner, which tastes pretty good but makes him sleepy. When Rory awakens, he’s a feathered, square-jawed Deinonychus. Concerned, Rory’s mum checks the package label: “CAUTION: MAY CAUSE DINOSAUR TRANSFORMATION.” Now Rory is stuck as a dino until they can figure out what to do. For the rest of the week, he and his friends take a lot of selfies, his mum writes him a note explaining his odd appearance to his teachers, and they all try to investigate the store where the dinosaur pie came from. Though Rory deals with the ramifications of having a tail and not being able to talk, overall, this is a goofy story sure to inspire laughs. The tone stays light throughout, and the first-person narration offers readers a window into Rory’s thoughts. Amusing, blocky illustrations depict Rory and his mum with pale skin; several secondary characters are dark-skinned.
A roar-ing good time! (Fantasy. 6-9)Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781915071491
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Little Island
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
Charming.
An assortment of unusual characters form friendships and help each other become their best selves.
Mr. and Mrs. Tupper, who live at Number 3 Ramshorn Drive, are antiquarians. Their daughter, Jillian, loves and cares for a plant named Ivy, who has “three speckles on each leaf and three letters in her name.” Toasty, the grumpy goldfish, lives in an octagonal tank and wishes he were Jillian’s favorite; when Arthur the spider arrives inside an antique desk, he brings wisdom and insight. Ollie the violet plant, Louise the bee, and Sunny the canary each arrive with their own quirks and problems to solve. Each character has a distinct personality and perspective; sometimes they clash, but more often they learn to empathize, see each other’s points of view, and work to help one another. They also help the Tupper family with bills and a burglar. The Fan brothers’ soft-edged, old-fashioned, black-and-white illustrations depict Toasty and Arthur with tiny hats; Ivy and Ollie have facial expressions on their plant pots. The Tuppers have paper-white skin and dark hair. The story comes together like a recipe: Simple ingredients combine, transform, and rise into something wonderful. In its matter-of-fact wisdom, rich vocabulary (often defined within the text), hint of magic, and empathetic nonhuman characters who solve problems in creative ways, this delightful work is reminiscent of Ferris by Kate DiCamillo, Our Friend Hedgehog by Lauren Castillo, and Ivy Lost and Found by Cynthia Lord and Stephanie Graegin.
Charming. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781665942485
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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