Langreuter and Dahle’s gentle story fails to cover any new ground, but readers will relate to Brayden’s experience and...
In this German import, a bunny is convinced that living with his friends will be easier and more enjoyable than obeying the rules at home.
Late one morning, Brayden is reluctant to get out of bed, pick up his toys, wash his whiskers or play with his sisters. He grumbles to his mother, “I wish I could go live with my friends.…I wouldn’t have to do chores.” When his mother asks him if this is really what he wants to do, he picks up his backpack and leaves. All of Brayden’s friends’ families warmly welcome him, but no one scratches his ears “like Mommy does.” No place is exactly right: Missy Mouse’s house is too messy, with toys everywhere; Benny Badger’s family smells “a little funny” because they never wash up; Fipsi Squirrel’s home is too high up in the tree to climb. Cousin Pepi’s house seems perfect until Brayden gets “a curious lump in his bunny throat,…an odd tugging in his bunny tummy [and] a strange jabbing in his bunny heart.” Readers will immediately understand what is happening—he is missing his home and his mommy. Soon, Brayden returns, and Mommy Bunny lovingly welcomes him with a perfect scratch on his ears.
Langreuter and Dahle’s gentle story fails to cover any new ground, but readers will relate to Brayden’s experience and perhaps develop a better appreciation for the comforts and rules of home. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7358-4126-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children...
A fizzy yet revealing romp through the toy world.
Though of standard picture-book size, Stein and illustrator Staake’s latest collaboration (Bugs Galore, 2012, etc.) presents a sweeping compendium of diversions for the young. From fairies and gnomes, race cars and jacks, tin cans and socks, to pots ’n’ pans and a cardboard box, Stein combs the toy kingdom for equally thrilling sources of fun. These light, tightly rhymed quatrains focus nicely on the functions characterizing various objects, such as “Floaty, bubbly, / while-you-wash toys” or “Sharing-secrets- / with-tin-cans toys,” rather than flatly stating their names. Such ambiguity at once offers Staake free artistic rein to depict copious items capable of performing those tasks and provides pre-readers ample freedom to draw from the experiences of their own toy chests as they scan Staake’s vibrant spreads brimming with chunky, digitally rendered objects and children at play. The sense of community and sharing suggested by most of the spreads contributes well to Stein’s ultimate theme, which he frames by asking: “But which toy is / the best toy ever? / The one most fun? / Most cool and clever?” Faced with three concluding pages filled with all sorts of indoor and outside toys to choose from, youngsters may be shocked to learn, on turning to the final spread, that the greatest one of all—“a toy SENSATION!”—proves to be “[y]our very own / imagination.”
Clever verse coupled with bold primary-colored images is sure to attract and hone the attention of fun-seeking children everywhere. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6254-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
Great gobs of glue should be more fun than this. (Picture book. 4-7)
Can there be too much glue? Matty’s about to find out.
Matty’s art teacher warns him that too much glue will never dry, but Matty (and his dad) loves glue; they play with it constantly. So Matty finds the “fullest” bottle in the art room and squirts it all over his project. Then he flops down in the middle of the mess…and gets stuck. He’s “a blucky stucky mess!” His friends try to lasso him with yarn and haul him out, but the yarn breaks and gets stuck; now, he’s “a clingy stringy, blucky stucky mess.” A Lego tow truck snaps apart in another rescue attempt, making him a “click-brick, clingy stringy, blucky stucky mess!” When the bell rings, the glue’s dry, and dad must peel gluey Matty off the table. At home, he’s divested of his glue suit, and Dad puts a magnet on it and sticks it to the fridge. After dinner, the family explores the fun of duct tape. Despite the busy plot and superabundance of exclamation marks, Lefebvre’s debut never rises to the level of mayhem or fun it aspires to. The cumulative portion of the tale loses rhyme, rhythm and logic six pages before it ends. Retz’s Photoshop paintings are bright, wide-eyed and goofy, but they can’t add enough fun to compensate for the lackluster text.
Great gobs of glue should be more fun than this. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-9362612-7-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flashlight Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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