Sweet.
After several setbacks, Panda finds a best friend.
Deep in the dewy forest, Panda sits alone, wishing for a friend. Not far away, he sees another panda chewing on bamboo shoots and thinks this might be a likely friend, but he doesn’t know how to approach. He tries dancing like the flamingos, but it is a series of missteps—literally. Bouncing like the lemurs just has him landing with a plop. The blue-footed boobies strut majestically, and the peacock has dazzling feathers. Panda can’t master the booby walk, and bamboo leaves are no substitute for the grandeur of the peacock’s tail. Panda trudges off into the forest to eat his dinner. At this lowest moment, the other panda peeks out from between the bamboo to say hello. Panda has “his best idea yet.” He offers to share, and a friendship is born. Lambert’s lovely illustrations carry the story with minimal text; his pages have a shiny silver background, against which his realistic animal figures pop. His message on friendship persuades, to a point: can’t Panda also be friends with animals who are different? The other panda is distinguished from Panda only by the brown of her eye patches; gray-patched Panda often appears multiple times on the page, which may lead younger listeners to wonder exactly how many pandas are in this book, so it’s best used with older preschoolers who are practiced at decoding pictures.
Sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-065-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the...
In this deceptively spare, very beginning reader, a girl assembles a robot and then treats it like a slave until it goes on strike.
Having put the robot together from a jumble of loose parts, the budding engineer issues an increasingly peremptory series of rhymed orders— “Throw, Bot. / Row, Bot”—that turn from playful activities like chasing bubbles in the yard to tasks like hoeing the garden, mowing the lawn and towing her around in a wagon. Jung crafts a robot with riveted edges, big googly eyes and a smile that turns down in stages to a scowl as the work is piled on. At last, the exhausted robot plops itself down, then in response to its tormentor’s angry “Don’t say no, Bot!” stomps off in a huff. In one to four spacious, sequential panels per spread, Jung develops both the plotline and the emotional conflict using smoothly modeled cartoon figures against monochromatic or minimally detailed backgrounds. The child’s commands, confined in small dialogue balloons, are rhymed until her repentant “Come on home, Bot” breaks the pattern but leads to a more equitable division of labor at the end.
A straightforward tale of conflict and reconciliation for newly emergent readers? Not exactly, which raises it above the rest. (Easy reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-87083-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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