An eclectic and soothing selection.
Zoo inhabitants put on the charm in this gentle alphabet offering.
Each of the 26 letters is represented by a character worthy of embracing. Each page is divided into brightly colored quadrants, with an animal and its letter occupying squares next to each letter. The capital letter is on a flap; lift the flap to reveal the lowercase letter on the other side and the name of the animal. The animals stand at attention facing front, their round faces often towering over their feet. Choices include animals mostly familiar to older toddlers (D for dog, K for kangaroo), though there is the occasional infelicitous surprise (U stands for upland gorilla), and filing bunny under B instead of R (for rabbit) is a dubious decision. Q is for quail (ho-hum), and X is the hard-working X-ray fish. The solid bookmaking and padded cover make this appropriate for the youngest audience. Probably the book's greatest asset is its muted palette, which works with the graphically abstract animal shapes to provide effective but quiet contrast.
An eclectic and soothing selection. (Board book. 3 mos.-2)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7624-4067-2
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
A fun spotlight on a warm-weather treat.
An ice cream truck makes the neighborhood rounds.
Shaped like a truck, this board book shows the pastel-pink vehicle touring various spots—the school, the library, the pool, and the park—before retiring for the night. The rhyming text keeps pages turning and lends itself to a lap-sit read-aloud. Words like mosey and cruise are fresh synonyms for the more obvious go and drive. Surprisingly, there is only a brief mention of the truck’s iconic tune (“You’ll hear me at the park”). The anthropomorphic truck has a warm, welcoming face but no driver. This means there are odd floating ice cream scoops, and children seem to magically receive treats. The thickly outlined, colorful, appealing illustrations are similar to those in other board books. Little ones will enjoy looking for fun details on the various spreads, such as flowers, houses, and animals. The children are diverse in terms of skin tone and hair color, and they and the truck are smiling in nearly every scene. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A fun spotlight on a warm-weather treat. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: May 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781665932981
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
A sweet but standard-issue Christmas read.
Little ones are taught their ABCs with Christmas iconography.
A CAT nibbles on a candy cane, and FOXES sing holiday carols, while LANTERNS glow and ORNAMENTS sparkle on festive trees. Christmas is in the air, and so are the letters of the alphabet. Each letter gets a corresponding Christmas illustration, charmingly colored and cozily composed. The easily read text beneath each picture forms rhyming couplets (“GEESE with gumdrops stacked up tall. / HOME is where we deck the halls”), with the key word set in all caps. The imagery mixes spiritual and secular icons side by side: there are baby JESUS, SANTA, the “Three kind KINGS,” and (a little mystifyingly) “UNICORNS donning underwear.” The warm color palette draws little readers in, and the illustrations have a gingerbread-cookie aesthetic, though there is no real attempt to include Christmas traditions such as luminaria from nondominant cultures. The picture that groups a stereotypical Eskimo, an igloo, and some penguins will madden many readers on both cultural and geographical fronts.
A sweet but standard-issue Christmas read. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6125-7
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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