New color illustrations introduce an English classic about a small barn owl—unfortunately and inexplicably named “Plop”—who learns to love the dark. At his mother’s suggestion, Plop, who thinks the dark is scary, asks various people about it. Each (among them a boy, a scout, and an astronomer) gives him a personal reason for appreciating the night. At last, a black cat leads him away from his sleeping parents to the rooftops where, looking over the sleeping town, Plop realizes that the night really is beautiful, and that he really is a night bird. The full-page pastel illustrations are full of rich night hues of deep blue skies, light, and shadow, and smaller sketches on alternate pages show the little owl with his new acquaintances. Plop, though a fledged bird, appears smaller and softer than his owl parents and is a thoroughly endearing creature in these pictures, and the art carries the story over several weak spots. In one of Plop’s less convincing encounters, a grandmotherly woman tells him that she likes the dark because it is kind, and she can forget that she is old—an idea more sentimental than true. In another—less universal than the fear of the dark that the tale addresses—a girl tells him that the dark is necessary so that Santa can come and fill the stockings for Christmas Day. But the fireworks that the boy invites Plop to watch are reflected in the big dark eyes of the young barn owl and his parents—a nicely dramatic depiction of the awe that night can hold. Parents and children are likely to overlook some pedestrian moments in the story for the overall reassurance it may bring. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7636-1562-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children...
A fizzy yet revealing romp through the toy world.
Though of standard picture-book size, Stein and illustrator Staake’s latest collaboration (Bugs Galore, 2012, etc.) presents a sweeping compendium of diversions for the young. From fairies and gnomes, race cars and jacks, tin cans and socks, to pots ’n’ pans and a cardboard box, Stein combs the toy kingdom for equally thrilling sources of fun. These light, tightly rhymed quatrains focus nicely on the functions characterizing various objects, such as “Floaty, bubbly, / while-you-wash toys” or “Sharing-secrets- / with-tin-cans toys,” rather than flatly stating their names. Such ambiguity at once offers Staake free artistic rein to depict copious items capable of performing those tasks and provides pre-readers ample freedom to draw from the experiences of their own toy chests as they scan Staake’s vibrant spreads brimming with chunky, digitally rendered objects and children at play. The sense of community and sharing suggested by most of the spreads contributes well to Stein’s ultimate theme, which he frames by asking: “But which toy is / the best toy ever? / The one most fun? / Most cool and clever?” Faced with three concluding pages filled with all sorts of indoor and outside toys to choose from, youngsters may be shocked to learn, on turning to the final spread, that the greatest one of all—“a toy SENSATION!”—proves to be “[y]our very own / imagination.”
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children everywhere. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6254-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
The can’t-miss subject of this Step into Reading series entry—a unicorn with a magic horn who also longs for wings—trumps its text, which is dry even by easy-reader standards. A boy unicorn, whose horn has healing powers, reveals his wish to a butterfly in a castle garden, a bluebird in the forest and a snowy white swan in a pond. Falling asleep at the edge of the sea, the unicorn is visited by a winged white mare. He heals her broken wing and she flies away. After sadly invoking his wish once more, he sees his reflection: “He had big white wings!” He flies off after the mare, because he “wanted to say, ‘Thank you.’ ” Perfectly suiting this confection, Silin-Palmer’s pictures teem with the mass market–fueled iconography of what little girls are (ostensibly) made of: rainbows, flowers, twinkly stars and, of course, manes down to there. (Easy reader. 4-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83117-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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