Gorgeous images that capture one’s attention, along with entertaining text.
This animal-focused picture book illustrates the alphabet with vibrantly colored mosaics of glass tile, pebbles, and other materials.
Many abecedarian books use animal names to teach letters, so it takes something special to stand out from the crowd. Caseley (The Kissing Diary, 2007, etc.) achieves that with beautifully constructed mosaics illustrating each letter and its corresponding animal. “E for Elephant,” for example, depicts a gray-tusked pachyderm against a richly colored background of blue sky and bright red, yellow, orange, and blue flowers, with lush greenery. The elephant’s trunk sprays alternating lines of blue-and-white and flower mosaic tiles in joyful profusion. Although the book mostly devotes one page to each letter, the elephant, appropriately enough, takes up a full two pages. As with all the pictures, a decorative border surrounds it—this one has alternating squares of pink and yellow. The text begins with a large mosaic “E,” festooned with shimmering tesserae; the whole entry reads: “E is for elephant, / biggest and best. / With big ears and a trunk, / it’s so hard to get dressed!” As throughout, the rhyme helps make the text memorable, and its silliness suits the mood of a children’s book. Although Caseley doesn’t include lowercase letters in the large entry headers, the text does depict them (“E is for elephant”). The ABCB rhymed quatrains usually describe a single letter, while others are spread across two: “Q is for quetzal, / who looks like a parrot. / R is for rabbit, / how it loves / a carrot!” Some vocabulary may be challenging for young children, such as “primate,” “foe,” or “nocturnal.” But more importantly, each page rewards long gazing with beautiful detail, such as malachitelike, striped green tiles of lily pads, or a little bird riding atop a hippo.
Gorgeous images that capture one’s attention, along with entertaining text.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9966422-9-3
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Full Cycle Publications, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Aug. 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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PERSPECTIVES
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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The greening of Dr. Seuss, in an ecology fable with an obvious message but a savingly silly style. In the desolate land of the Lifted Lorax, an aged creature called the Once-ler tells a young visitor how he arrived long ago in the then glorious country and began manufacturing anomalous objects called Thneeds from "the bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees." Despite protests from the Lorax, a native "who speaks for the trees," he continues to chop down Truffulas until he drives away the Brown Bar-ba-loots who had fed on the Tuffula fruit, the Swomee-Swans who can't sing a note for the smogulous smoke, and the Humming-Fish who had hummed in the pond now glumped up with Gluppity-Glupp. As for the Once-let, "1 went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds./ And I biggered my money, which everyone needs" — until the last Truffula falls. But one seed is left, and the Once-let hands it to his listener, with a message from the Lorax: "UNLESS someone like you/ cares a whole awful lot,/ nothing is going to get better./ It's not." The spontaneous madness of the old Dr. Seuss is absent here, but so is the boredom he often induced (in parents, anyway) with one ridiculous invention after another. And if the Once-let doesn't match the Grinch for sheer irresistible cussedness, he is stealing a lot more than Christmas and his story just might induce a generation of six-year-olds to care a whole lot.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1971
ISBN: 0394823370
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
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