Lovely and playful for storytimes and family sharing.
Hurley cooks up a big pot of soup, introducing young children to the colorful veggies, kitchen equipment, and cooking techniques that bring it to table.
Opening in a lush garden foreshadowing the soup’s ingredients, the narrative shifts to the kitchen: “We are making Every Color Soup. / We’ll need… // purple.” That single, final word rests on bright white space, near a page-straddling eggplant with a green stem cap. As new color names are introduced on succeeding pages, the number of depicted ingredients increases, providing the opportunity to count objects from one to nine. (That is, until the pepper mill appears, scattering scores of “black” pepper specks.) The concept “clear” defines an array of seven glass measuring cups of broth, while “blue” is paired with a jar of Le Puys lentils. At “chop” and “drop,” Hurley’s signature Photoshopped pictures reveal the brown hands of an adult (with vibrant, pink-polished fingernails) and a child. One double-page spread tips vertically to show the soup pot bubbling on the gas stove, steam rising against the blue-and-white tile backsplash. A final “yum” appears alongside an overhead view of a bowl of the finished soup atop a red-and-white–checked tablecloth. Hurley appends a visual glossary of the ingredients and a simple recipe for Every Color Soup (with adult help mandated).
Lovely and playful for storytimes and family sharing. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Jan. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4814-6999-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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