A simple kids’ tale that blends gentle storytelling with real-life horse facts.
Two young horses play, nap, learn, and grow in Blessington’s debut picture book.
This book reaches out to its young readers in the first-person voices of two juvenile Clydesdales: a colt named Danny and a filly named Emily, born a year apart. It’s designed to look like a journal—the text appears to be hand-drawn on lined notebook paper—and each entry is illustrated with Garman’s photographs of the real-life Danny and Emily, who served as the book’s inspiration. The two horses live with or near other animals, including a cow, sheep, ponies, Sparky the dog, and Harry the hawk, on an idyllic-appearing farm in the Scottish Highlands (owned by the author and photographer in real life). After the equine brother and sister travel there by truck, they settle into their new home and share their simple, day-to-day adventures with a recurring theme: “Because we are kids too, we are curious”; “Because we are kids too, we lose our baby teeth,” and so on. The horses explore, overcome their fears, get into mischief, splash in mud puddles, play hide-and-seek, learn new skills, and make friends, just like human children do, albeit sometimes in rather different ways. For example, horse mischief includes “wee Emily” munching forbidden flowers, and when the two attend an outdoor classroom, their lessons include how to respond to reins. This book isn’t just for horse-lovers, though; it features a clear, pleasant narrative, matched in tone by its photographs, and it effectively invites young readers to relate to and empathize with “kids” of another species. To that end, the author uses creative license with some examples of kidlike behavior, such as Danny’s selfie close-up shot. She also offers humorous explanations for why Emily digs in the snow, and why Danny noses the ground as a rainbow arcs overhead. (Both involve some big brother/little sister teasing.) However, there is one error in word usage: the word “lay” in “We had to lay down for a nap.”
A simple kids’ tale that blends gentle storytelling with real-life horse facts.Pub Date: April 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4602-8891-7
Page Count: 36
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The seemingly ageless Seeger brings back his renowned giant for another go in a tuneful tale that, like the art, is a bit sketchy, but chockful of worthy messages. Faced with yearly floods and droughts since they’ve cut down all their trees, the townsfolk decide to build a dam—but the project is stymied by a boulder that is too huge to move. Call on Abiyoyo, suggests the granddaughter of the man with the magic wand, then just “Zoop Zoop” him away again. But the rock that Abiyoyo obligingly flings aside smashes the wand. How to avoid Abiyoyo’s destruction now? Sing the monster to sleep, then make it a peaceful, tree-planting member of the community, of course. Seeger sums it up in a postscript: “every community must learn to manage its giants.” Hays, who illustrated the original (1986), creates colorful, if unfinished-looking, scenes featuring a notably multicultural human cast and a towering Cubist fantasy of a giant. The song, based on a Xhosa lullaby, still has that hard-to-resist sing-along potential, and the themes of waging peace, collective action, and the benefits of sound ecological practices are presented in ways that children will both appreciate and enjoy. (Picture book. 5-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-689-83271-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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