The playful gimmicks will keep readers turning the pages and asking for it again and again.
A highly interactive, lightly conceptual board book.
The first of several movable components appears on the cover, which features a Caucasian toddler on a carousel horse that can move up and down via a sliding panel. Most of the consecutive pages present relatively sturdy tactile or interactive elements, all relating to horses. White and black toy horses sport velvety coats, and covering most of the final page of the book is a large flap that doubles as the door of a horse’s stall. Readers follow a toddler duo, a boy and girl pair with dark hair who could likely be fraternal twins, through a whole range of equine-related settings. Church’s cartoons, drawn with black lines over lightly textured backgrounds, present the scenes with crystal clarity. The rhyming text is minimal, but it frames each scene nicely and is just enough for the youngest readers: “Horsey up. / Horsey down. // Horsey jumping all around. // Horsey white. / Horsey black. // Horsey rolling on the track.” While the subtitle claims this work is “A Book of Opposites,” with only three opposite concepts presented in 12 pages, it hardly qualifies as a concept book.
The playful gimmicks will keep readers turning the pages and asking for it again and again. (Board book. 18 mos.-3)Pub Date: July 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-51204-6
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver.
The farmyard's chickens experience Halloween.
A round, full moon shines in the sky, and the chickens of Boynton's barnyard are feeling “nervous.” Pumpkins shine “with flickering eyes,” witches and wizards wander the pastures, and one chicken has seen “a mouse of enormous size.” It’s Halloween night, and readers will delight as the chickens huddle together and try to figure out what's going on. All ends well, of course, and in Boynton's trademark silly style. (It’s really quite remarkable how her ranks of white, yellow-beaked chickens evoke rows of candy corn.) At this point parents and children know what they're in for when they pick up a book by the prolific author, and she doesn't disappoint here. The chickens are silly, the pigs are cute, and the coloring and illustrations evoke a warmth that little ones wary of Halloween will appreciate. For children leery of the ghouls and goblins lurking in the holiday's iconography, this is a perfect antidote, emphasizing all the fun Halloween has to offer.
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7611-9300-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
An upbeat early book on feelings with a simple storyline that little ones will respond to.
This simplified version of Diesen and Hanna’s The Pout-Pout Fish (2008) is appropriate for babies and toddlers.
Brief, rhyming text tells the story of a sullen fish cheered up with a kiss. A little pink sea creature pokes his head out of a hole in the sea bottom to give the gloomy fish some advice: “Smile, Mr. Fish! / You look so down // With your glum-glum face / And your pout-pout frown.” He explains that there’s no reason to be worried, scared, sad or mad and concludes: “How about a smooch? / And a cheer-up wish? // Now you look happy: / What a smile, Mr. Fish!” Simple and sweet, this tale offers the lesson that sometimes, all that’s needed for a turnaround in mood is some cheer and encouragement to change our perspective. The clean, uncluttered illustrations are kept simple, except for the pout-pout fish’s features, which are delightfully expressive. Little ones will easily recognize and likely try to copy the sad, scared and angry looks that cross the fish’s face.
An upbeat early book on feelings with a simple storyline that little ones will respond to. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-37084-8
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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