“I root for the chicken!” writes Downing. Readers with good eyesight, even carnivorous ones, will too.
It’s Fat Tuesday, and the bubbling gumbo needs some meat! Or does it?
Seeing the Courir de Mardi Gras, the ritual hunt, forming, a red rooster sets out to warn all the animals: “Le capitaine puts on / his capuchon. / Hey, alligator, / you better get gon’!” Once the goose, the pig, the crawfish, the oysters, and the other creatures have been likewise alerted (with the titular chorus), is the rooster’s work done? “The band is playing on the front stoop. / Oh mais chère, I better warn the coop!” In Lindsley’s vigorously brushed rural scenes, the comically gesticulating red rooster often occupies the foreground as, behind, a multiracial procession of revelers in colorful festival costume goes from farm to farm begging for a handout. Alas, the forewarned animals are all lying low—and so it is that “Across Acadiana with no animals in sight, / all the Cajuns eat gumbo z’herbes tonight.” Cultural notes and a recipe for “green gumbo” cap this mildly subversive nod to a Mardi Gras tradition and a delicious regional dish. Unfortunately, although the refrain is set in a contrasting display type, much of the narrative text is set in black type against deep blue skies, making large portions of it very difficult to read.
“I root for the chicken!” writes Downing. Readers with good eyesight, even carnivorous ones, will too. (glossary) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4556-2300-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Pelican
Review Posted Online: Dec. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well worth a waddle.
An invitation to younger children to act like Adélie penguins.
Morales’ cartoon illustrations alternating with nature photos place a racially diverse group of young folks in cool-weather dress amid flocks of the diminutive penguins. Markle not only offers observations about penguin behavior but also urges readers to squawk, sled, waddle, take “power naps,” “fly through the ocean,” and leap away from predators right alongside them. Sidestepping the topic of reproduction requires an awkward hop. The author’s “Adélie pairs regularly gift [nesting] pebbles to each other” is misleadingly restated in the adjacent box as “When you live with penguins you will gift pebbles to your best friends.” And no grown-up is going to thank her for this cheerfully suggestive line: “Hungry Adélie chicks call nonstop until a parent finds them and feeds them.” Still, such playful suggestions are certainly child-friendly, and the series premise continues to artfully entice audiences to exercise both bodies and minds for insights into the world of nature—readers will especially enjoy the idea of tobogganing down a snowy slope like a penguin. Fans of the creators’ Could You Ever Dive With Dolphins?! (2023) will be pleased. A closing page of additional facts includes aerial images of Antarctica in summer and winter.
Well worth a waddle. (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781338858792
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Superficially appealing; much less so upon closer examination.
When Rabbit’s unbridled mania for collecting carrots leaves him unable to sleep in his cozy burrow, other animals offer to put him up.
But to Rabbit, their homes are just more storage space for carrots: Tortoise’s overstuffed shell cracks open; the branch breaks beneath Bird’s nest; Squirrel’s tree trunk topples over; and Beaver’s bulging lodge collapses at the first rainstorm. Impelled by guilt and the epiphany that “carrots weren’t for collecting—they were for SHARING!” Rabbit invites his newly homeless friends into his intact, and inexplicably now-roomy, burrow for a crunchy banquet. This could be read (with some effort) as a lightly humorous fable with a happy ending, and Hudson’s depictions of carrot-strewn natural scenes, of Rabbit as a plush bunny, and of the other animals as, at worst, mildly out of sorts support that take. Still, the insistent way Rabbit keeps forcing himself on his friends and the magnitude of the successive disasters may leave even less-reflective readers disturbed. Moreover, as Rabbit is never seen actually eating a carrot, his stockpiling looks a lot like the sort of compulsive hoarding that, in humans, is regarded as a mental illness.
Superficially appealing; much less so upon closer examination. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62370-638-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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