Worth a look for penguin fans.
It’s a penguin family reunion in Antarctica for Crystal’s birthday.
Little blue penguin Periwinkle, who lives in Australia, gets an invite to her cousin’s birthday. Periwinkle is worried that she is the only blue penguin and the smallest (by species, they are the smallest), but Mama counsels that it’s the insides that matter. Next she and her platypus buddy learn from wise koala Mr. Wendell where Antarctica is (and that there are no polar bears there). Perwinkle’s set to go. Albert Albatross straps on a passenger platform and flies Periwinkle and New Zealand cousin Rocky Rockhopper to South Africa to pick up Cappy. Albert can’t carry all of them, so they catch rides on humpback whales heading to meet the rest of the family in the snow. After much penguin frolicking on the ice and in the water, Periwinkle loses the gift that she brought but finds the inner strength to give Crystal a special, personal gift. Petersen-Fleming’s slim story functions as a vehicle for facts and a moral of individual specialness. Spafford’s signature illustrations from her line of cards, books, and (soon) television show can be a bit twee with all those very joyous penguins. But for those young naturalists who are interested in penguins as more than funny, flightless fowl, Periwinkle’s tale with penguin facts and maps on the endpapers is a good start.
Worth a look for penguin fans. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943198-03-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Blue Sneaker/Southwestern
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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