A winning combination of enlightening facts and practical advice for young pet owners.
A zoologist specializing in pets explains what house cats really need and want.
With the same insight and light touch that make his companion volume A First Guide to Dogs (2023) such a joy, Bradshaw follows Libby, a 4-year-old black-and-white feline, around for a day and a night—offering illuminating behavioral, anatomical, and psychological observations as he goes. While the author skips mention of illness and, conspicuously, reproductive organs or the removal thereof, he does marvel over feline eyes, paws, and other distinctive physical features and offers helpful hints about interpreting cat sounds and body language. Working from the crucial principle that pet cats can’t be forced but can be led, he demonstrates effective ways of introducing them to new homes, cat doors, litter boxes, and scratching posts. Bradshaw also describes different sorts of simple cat toys, including a clever “puzzle feeder” made from a plastic soda bottle full of treats that provides “a good way of giving a cat all the fun of hunting but without anything having to die,” and, speaking of which, dispels several myths: No, those freshly killed mice or birds aren’t meant to be “presents.” In Elsom’s informally drawn grayscale illustrations Libby’s owner, Miss Lewis, is light-skinned but has both an adopted daughter and neighbors of Indian descent.
A winning combination of enlightening facts and practical advice for young pet owners. (interview with the author) (Nonfiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9780593521854
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode.
A long-running series reaches its closing chapters.
Having, as Kline notes in her warm valedictory acknowledgements, taken 30 years to get through second and third grade, Harry Spooger is overdue to move on—but not just into fourth grade, it turns out, as his family is moving to another town as soon as the school year ends. The news leaves his best friend, narrator “Dougo,” devastated…particularly as Harry doesn’t seem all that fussed about it. With series fans in mind, the author takes Harry through a sort of last-day-of-school farewell tour. From his desk he pulls a burned hot dog and other items that featured in past episodes, says goodbye to Song Lee and other classmates, and even (for the first time ever) leads Doug and readers into his house and memento-strewn room for further reminiscing. Of course, Harry isn’t as blasé about the move as he pretends, and eyes aren’t exactly dry when he departs. But hardly is he out of sight before Doug is meeting Mohammad, a new neighbor from Syria who (along with further diversifying a cast that began as mostly white but has become increasingly multiethnic over the years) will also be starting fourth grade at summer’s end, and planning a written account of his “horrible” buddy’s exploits. Finished illustrations not seen.
A fitting farewell, still funny, acute, and positive in its view of human nature even in its 37th episode. (Fiction. 7-9)Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-47963-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look...
Winning actually isn’t everything, as jazz-happy Rooster learns when he goes up against the legendary likes of Mules Davis and Ella Finchgerald at the barnyard talent show.
Having put together a band with renowned cousin Duck Ellington and singer “Bee” Holiday, Rooster’s chances sure look good—particularly after his “ ‘Hen from Ipanema’ [makes] / the barnyard chickies swoon.”—but in the end the competition is just too stiff. No matter: A compliment from cool Mules and the conviction that he still has the world’s best band soon puts the strut back in his stride. Alexander’s versifying isn’t always in tune (“So, he went to see his cousin, / a pianist of great fame…”), and despite his moniker Rooster plays an electric bass in Bower’s canted country scenes. Children are unlikely to get most of the jokes liberally sprinkled through the text, of course, so the adults sharing it with them should be ready to consult the backmatter, which consists of closing notes on jazz’s instruments, history and best-known musicians.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58536-688-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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