Like Dick and Jane, Ed and Fred provide a way to practice a boring but necessary beginning reading skill. It’s too bad their...
Bolger works hard to tell a story with just 59 words—something of a feat.
Unfortunately, the instructional goal and an untrustworthy narrator overshadow Ed and Fred’s misadventures. Orange Ed and purple Fred, vaguely bean-shaped cartoon creatures, act out the words of an omniscient narrator. Fred’s words are printed in speech bubbles, while Ed silently responds to the narrator’s prompts. By the eighth cartoon panel, Fred figures out this structure and speaks directly to the narrator. He grows increasingly unhappy to find himself the butt of the rather mean-spirited narrator’s jokes, not unlike the daisy-headed Daffy in the classic “Duck Amuck.” When he refuses to run while wearing a chicken suit, tigers and gorillas appear, and Fred gives in. Additional reading practice is provided when sight words are repeated as environmental print, including Fred’s sign reading, “I want OUT of this book.” Told “it was just a joke,” he responds with a sign that reads, “Well, it was not funny.” They seem to negotiate a truce but then: “POOF!” Fred is humiliated again. The list of sight words to practice is split between the beginning of the book and the endpapers, which may confuse young learners. Words not on the lists (“welcome,” “jungle,” “underpants”) depend on context clues.
Like Dick and Jane, Ed and Fred provide a way to practice a boring but necessary beginning reading skill. It’s too bad their narrator is not as nice as Dick and Jane’s. (Early reader. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-228602-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Decidedly one-trick yet inspired and prettily designed.
Coppo adapts a 17th-century Italian magic trick for her latest meta excursion.
Tuxedoed Lady Rabbit welcomes her audience, acknowledging that wow-level magic is difficult to pull off in a book. Making something appear as if out of nowhere…well, “any book can do that!” But the titular claim bears out in cleverly designed pages. First, readers are told to scan a page of audience members (36 charmingly unique denizens arrayed in six rows) and to choose one member. Lady Rabbit then asks kids to identify the row of their seated pick by turning to a specific page. Uh-oh! Every audience member has changed seats! Again directed to a particular page based on their choice’s new row, readers will discover that Lady Rabbit has guessed their pick. All nine answer pages include the characters and the instruction: “I guessed it, didn’t I? Now go to page 39.” There, with a “TA-DA!” and a bow, the white rabbit invites kids to turn back to pages 12-13 to try again. Coppa’s finely inked floral borders and decorated proscenium arch, colored in black and white and muted greens and salmon, emanate a vintage feel. Kids will warm to amusing audience members such as Shroom, Yeti, and Unknown (a smiling question mark) and will delight in the various mini-creatures adorning each page. One downside of the trick’s interactivity: The six pages that redirect readers to the solution pages are visually identical.
Decidedly one-trick yet inspired and prettily designed. (historical note) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781797229010
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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