The latest Froggy from London is as much fun as its predecessors to read aloud, with all its zips, zwits, and zoops. In this episode, Froggy is going to a fancy restaurant with his parents to celebrate their anniversary. First he must get dressed in his best duds (that’s where all those zips and zoops come in). Then it’s off to Chez Yum, a swanky spot where his mother cautions him to “be neat, be quiet, and don’t put your feet on the table.” Of course, Froggy being Froggy, that’s like asking the wind to stop rustling the leaves. He licks salt off his hand, bangs spoons on the table, sucks on sugar cubes, plucks the petals off the flowers in the vase on his table. But really, like, where’s the food already? And when it finally arrives, shortly after Froggy has broken into a low-blood-sugar-inspired bit of soft shoe across the restaurant floor, he catches the eye of a pretty young frog friend and proceeds to drag the tablecloth, food and all, off the table and onto his head. Well, there you are: One doesn’t have to espouse fast-food establishments to caution that a fancy restaurant might not be the place to take a hungry kid, even if that kid likes raw flies best of all. Splat! Ssllluuuurrrrpppp! Bonk! —it’s impossible not to like Froggy, though you may not want to take him home. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89686-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Engaging, rewarding, and utterly delightful.
Readers count from one to 10 and then jump from there to 15, 20, and 25 in this picture book featuring creatures in the wild.
Animals and their babies take the stage in this paper-engineered tale that allows young readers to make surprise discoveries. On the first spread, they meet a bat. Lift up the precisely die-cut bat’s wing to see “1 baby / Holding on tight as they fly through the night.” Page turns are propelled by the query that concludes each and every spread: “Who has more babies than that?” Continuing to count upward, readers meet leopard cubs, owlets, fox kits, leverets, caterpillars, and many more animals. Creatively designed flaps and die cuts, as well as pages with nontraditional trims, invite young hands to lift, peek, and search: Lift leaf-shaped flaps to see “8 baby mice”; peek through tree-trunk–shaped die cuts to see a forest with “15 poults”; and turn pages shaped like verdant hills to see “2 lambs.” The rhymes are unfussy, pleasingly rhythmic, and have unfailingly flawless meter (“9 ducklings / Swimming and snacking, / Practicing quacking”). Richly colored illustrations in vivid crimson, sapphire, marble green, and copper hues feature realistic animals in their natural habitats, though most are given sleek, wide, stylized eyes. The final spread throws readers a curveball with “LOTS of spiderlings,” depicted as die-cut holes with eight legs each on the previous page—and, it turns out, many of the pages before that.
Engaging, rewarding, and utterly delightful. (Picture book/novelty. 3-6)Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-32453-0
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Sweet, but like marshmallow chicks, just a bit of fluff.
The smallest bunny in Easter Town finds that she and her little chick friend are big enough to help the Easter Bunny prepare for the annual Easter egg hunt.
In the fifth entry in the Littlest series, Penny the bunny wants to help get ready for Easter. All the rabbits in her family are busy with their special jobs, getting eggs, candy, and baskets in order, but little Penny seems too small or clumsy to be of any help. Her parents and siblings try to let her assist them, but she falls into a vat of dye, spills marshmallow goo, gets tangled in the strands of a basket, and fails to fill even one Easter basket. Feeling dejected, Penny befriends a tiny chick named Peck. With the help of Penny’s family, Penny and Peck make miniature treats and petite baskets suitable to their own size. When the Easter Bunny’s main helpers fall ill, Penny and Peck convince the Easter Bunny that their small size will help them do the best job of finding spots to hide eggs as well as their own tiny basket creations. This too-pat conclusion doesn’t quite hold up to logical analysis, as the full-size eggs and baskets are still too large for Penny and Peck to handle. Bland cartoon illustrations are filled with bunnies in candy-bright pastels with a greeting-card cuteness quotient.
Sweet, but like marshmallow chicks, just a bit of fluff. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-32912-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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