Losing a pet is always difficult; finding a new one isn’t the solution for everyone, but in this case, it’s a decidedly...
A young child describes the behavior of a spectral cat.
Straightforward first-person narration combines with simply composed illustrations to explain why the child believes that a ghost cat shares the house with them. Although they admit that “It’s always gone before I can really see it,” they’re convinced that the cat is moving around, engaged in typical feline behaviors like scratching, rubbing, cuddling, and meowing. Illustrations that show upended books and bowls and a traumatized fish provide additional, gently humorous evidence to support their hypothesis. When they finally catch a glimpse of the ghost cat (readers have seen it all along—gray-blue surrounded by a haze of white with staring yellowish eyes), it’s on its way out, or rather “through,” the front door. The child opens the door to find an apparently corporeal white kitten waiting there. Atteberry’s digitally created artwork features a limited but appealing palette of primarily warm golds and browns and cool blues, punctuated with greens and yellows. Lightly sketched backgrounds are spare in detail, though a few carefully placed photos suggest that the child and cat once shared their home in a more conventional fashion. The minimal detail extends to the child’s face, which is very expressive despite the absence of a mouth (the child has beige skin and a shock of straight, brown hair).
Losing a pet is always difficult; finding a new one isn’t the solution for everyone, but in this case, it’s a decidedly happy development. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4283-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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