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
What if the market was closed when you wanted to bake a pie? You could embark for Europe, learn Italian en route, and pick up some semolina wheat in Italy, an egg in France, kurundu bark for cinnamon in Sri Lanka, and an entire cow in England (butter) before coming home via Jamaica (sugar) and Vermont (apples). The expertly designed illustrations in which a dark-haired lass journeys by various means to these interesting places to get her groceries are lovely and lively, and the narrative, too, travels at a spritely pace. The journey is neither quite logical enough to be truly informative nor quite bizarre enough to be satisfyingly silly, while the rich, sweet recipe that's appended will take some adult assistance. Still, fun. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: May 2, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-83705-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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