No trick: Count this one as a real Halloween treat.
Various fearsome but playful beings wend their ways toward a secret destination on Halloween night.
Ghosts, vampires, mummies, zombies, witches, skeletons, and others utilize various styles of locomotion to navigate “up the hill, / in the chill, / by the light of the moon, / moon, moon, moon.” And they do so very rhythmically in this winner of a holiday-themed counting book. Those adult readers who are familiar with the bouncy song “The Ants Go Marching” will happily trot that tune out to sing to listeners, rather than read, the rollicking verses herein, inspired by the rhyme schemes and rhythms of that jaunty ditty. The rhymes read and scan deliciously well and develop vocabulary wonderfully by utilizing nifty words to describe the characters’ movements and behaviors as the creatures and count-along proceed. Witches “cackle” and “crank their motors” (their brooms have outboards); mummies “stumble,…murmurs echoing frightfully”; zombies “lumber” and “lurch”; and vampires “hover.” The humorous, extremely child-appealing illustrations are set against mostly dark red, blue, and purple backgrounds lit by a full moon, as befits the occasion. Cheery, dapperly attired protagonists move inexorably through the atmospheric evening—until the final spread makes it delightfully clear why the motley crew’s trek up that hill was well worth the trip. A bevy of smiley ghosts float gracefully across front and back endpapers.
No trick: Count this one as a real Halloween treat. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: July 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-31213-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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