The lyrics are better when sung—in either language—but their tone is properly echoed in these sweet, soft-focus...
Set to the tender night song’s standard English text, a suite of muted scenes features a drowsy, tousled child in bed beneath stars and angels.
Using long, visible strokes of brush and colored pencil, Alizadeh sets figures that look like small wooden dolls in misty scenes lit dimly by a candle, a moon with dots for eyes or informally drawn stars within pale nimbuses. Along with a parent at the beginning and near the end, doves, clouds and lambent-winged guardian angels hover as the young sleeper drifts off in gentle stages. This edition comes without a musical arrangement, and despite the titular refrain, the 19th-century translation from the Welsh doesn’t always read trippingly, for example, of angels: “They should of all fears disarm you, / No foreboding should alarm you. // They will let no peril harm you….” Still, the aforementioned refrain creates a soothing rhythm that anchors the song’s assurance of peaceful slumber.
The lyrics are better when sung—in either language—but their tone is properly echoed in these sweet, soft-focus illustrations. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: June 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-927018-09-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simply Read
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Similar to Lenny Hort’s Seals on the Bus, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (2000), this treatment populates the bus with a...
Cabrera continues to adapt nursery rhymes and children’s songs (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, 2010, etc.) into interactive picture books for the young preschool set, here taking on that beloved bus ride.
Similar to Lenny Hort’s Seals on the Bus, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (2000), this treatment populates the bus with a menagerie of African animals ranging from the common lion and zebra to lesser-known flamingos and bush babies. Most animals make a trio of sounds, like the monkeys’ “Chatter, chatter, chatter” or the hyena’s “Ha, ho, hee,” but on occasion there is action: The chameleon “plays Hide-and-seek.” The tale ends as the giraffe driver delivers the wild riders to a watering hole with a satisfying “SPLISH! SPLASH! SPLOSH! All day long!” Readers will enjoy the journey Cabrera illustrates with her easily recognizable style—bright hues outlined in black, with a finger-paint–like texture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2350-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
A bit of a turkey itself.
A board-book twist on “This Little Piggy” has turkeys making the preparations for the family feast.
The text echoes the familiar rhyme, even beginning with “This little turkey went to market.” Readers already introduced to standard animal-sounds books will wonder what happened when they get to the end and the turkeys sound a lot like the final piggy, singing, “We…we …we... / …wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!” What happened to “gobble-gobble-gobble”? Furthermore, the in-between activities feel selected to suit the rhyme scheme rather than logic: why would a turkey knit a sweater, and what does that have to do with Thanksgiving? Blanco distinguishes the turkeys from one another with clothing and comb style, but they all have the same wattle and chubby wings/arms. Gender stereotyping is incompletely avoided. A turkey in a fedora goes to market, while a turkey wearing a baseball cap and trousers with suspenders “swept the floor.” Both male and female birds help set the table, but turkeys in dresses and pompadoured combs mind the little turkeys until supper is served, knit that sweater, and eventually call everyone in to eat.
A bit of a turkey itself. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0302-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
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