Even the youngest children don’t deserve this degree of dumbing down.
Little Raindrop journeys from cloud to sea and back again.
This is the water cycle, but it’s a simplistic telling that lacks any scientific vocabulary and stars an anthropomorphized water droplet with a face, hands and feet. Little Raindrop’s adventure begins as he falls from a cloud “[o]ne dark and stormy day,” but by the page turn, there’s enough sunlight to have made a rainbow, which Little Raindrop falls through, enjoying the colors along the way. Landing in a depression on a rock, his journey continues when other drops (nonanthropomorphized) accumulate enough to make his puddle overflow. Joining a stream, he sees all kinds of animals and chases the sticks the children toss in the water. When his stream joins a river, Little Raindrop avoids the sharp rocks of the waterfalls; in the sea, he meets dolphins. Coming to rest on the sand, “Little Raindrop got hotter and hotter, until the warmth of the sun drew him up into the air,” still in the shape of a raindrop, where he joins other smiling droplets in a gray cloud. Kolanovic’s illustrations have the gritty look of crayon drawings. Little Raindrop’s surroundings match his small size; while the background details are simple, the animals he encounters all sweet—cloyingly so. Fortunately the wellspring of intellectually respectful titles on the water cycle is far from dry.
Even the youngest children don’t deserve this degree of dumbing down. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62873-821-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
These are spinoffs from a TV series that is itself a spinoff. Not surprisingly, the dilution of both visual and literary...
The Guess How Much I Love You franchise sets a low bar for its knockoff sequels.
Seeing dark clouds gather, Little Nutbrown Hare, Little Field Mouse, Little Grey Squirrel and Little Redwood Fox (who is, evidently, not very hungry) join Big Nutbrown Hare in a cave, then venture out after the storm to splash about and see a rainbow. The soft, intimate texture of the art in the original stories is gone, replaced by hard-edged, less finely drawn details and creatures depicted with generic postures and expressions. The animal figures are mechanically superimposed into the scenes in the manner of an animated cartoon and so float over the background meadows rather than run through them and stand atop rather than in the solid-looking puddles. With similar disregard for production values, in the co-published Snow Magic, Big and Little Nutbrown watch snow fall from a slightly misted moonlit sky, then with Little Field Mouse gambol over the drifts without appearing to touch them. In this second episode, Little Nutbrown’s mild character undergoes a sudden alteration as well: “[He] gave a crafty smile as he kicked his ball with another mighty kick. ‘Race you!’ ”
These are spinoffs from a TV series that is itself a spinoff. Not surprisingly, the dilution of both visual and literary quality goes beyond atrocious. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6993-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intimate encounter with nature lit not just by stars and fireflies, but also an affecting dose of daddy-daughter warmth.
On a summer’s night, a child sails out into her yard to gather (and then release) lightning bugs.
Just like the stars that seem to wink and glimmer in Snyder’s moonlit, mist-streaked night skies, fireflies glow in the grass amid scattered trees and flowers. They smile in close-up views as the child, barefoot and nightgown-clad, gently gathers them into a big jar while her father looks on. Reflecting that “I love catching fireflies, / but they are not mine,” she cups each captive in her hand before “easy and slow, / I whisper good-bye, / then I let it go!” A spread of firefly facts caps the idyllic nighttime foray. Rough sparkly patches on the jacket add a tactile element that compensates, at least in part, for inner flaps that cover parts of the endpaper nightscapes. The bugs and brushwork resemble Eric Carle’s, but Snyder’s art works its own magic.
An intimate encounter with nature lit not just by stars and fireflies, but also an affecting dose of daddy-daughter warmth. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-60905-291-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Apple
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
