A child, a tree frog, and a poignant, poetic journey to find a sense of home.
Sometimes all it takes is finding an unexpected friend, waiting and still, ready for play.
A young child with pale skin, short black hair, and (literally) almond-shaped eyes has just moved to a new home. Unsure of this big change, the child holds a cat stuffie and looks askance at the movers. Then a little frog catches the child’s eye. Spread by spread, season by season, lyrical poems tell the story of this budding friendship, in which the child learns to be still and see small details in this world, as an artist or scientist does. These deceptively simple poems contain a multitude of poetic devices. Short, expressive facts about tree frogs also accompany the poems. In playing with the frog, the child mimics its movements, and on one spread, they are both depicted with the same speckles and black outline. This oneness helps the child feel less lonely and eventually find a friend in a brown-skinned classmate who is equally still and observant. Sudyka’s bold lines and vivid watercolor palette paint an immersive, verdant world, with occasional color pops. Whimsical flourishes often blur the child’s real and imaginary worlds while concealed in the illustrations are names of birds, bugs, flowers, and more for young scientists to discover. Backmatter provides additional information about tree frogs, perfect for STEAM lessons. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
A child, a tree frog, and a poignant, poetic journey to find a sense of home. (Picture book/poetry. 4-7)Pub Date: April 27, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-358-06476-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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