In bright, heavily brushed painted illustrations, bright-green Veronica Sue poses in comfy dress along with other family...
A plump and (generally) cheery frog models sneezes and sighs, giggles, slumps, growls and other common bodily signals.
In bright, heavily brushed painted illustrations, bright-green Veronica Sue poses in comfy dress along with other family members in a variety of simply rendered indoor and outdoor settings. These paintings deftly incorporate select but well-placed small animations, sound effects and touch-activated balls, flies or other items. Two to four lines of rhymed comment on each manually advanced screen provide explanatory glosses for her sounds, expressions or gestures—“Her tummy says ‘GRRRRR’ when it’s ready to eat. / Her tastebuds say ‘YUM’ when they find something sweet.” Uncertain new readers can get a chirpy audio reading of that page alone by tapping a speaker icon in the corner. A house icon in another corner opens a strip of relatively large thumbnail images for quick backing and forthing. The app isn’t immune to crashes, and the text could use copy editing—Veronica Sue “let’s [sic] out a GASP” at one point, and “tastebuds” is usually two words. Moreover, children with a cognitive disability may have trouble picking up Veronica Sue’s relatively understated cues. Nevertheless, this introduction to nonverbal language is likely to spark both better self-awareness and further discussion.Pub Date: May 19, 2011
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: My Black Dog Books
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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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BOOK REVIEW
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago.
A fairy tending their garden manages to survive a gaggle of young intruders.
In halting cadences typical of the long-running—and increasingly less amusing—How To Catch… series, the startled mite—never seen face-on in Elkerton’s candy-colored pictures and indeterminate of gender—wonders about the racially diverse interlopers: “Do they know that I can grant wishes? / Or that a new fairy is born when they giggle?” The visual action rather belies the sweetness of the verses, the palette, the bright flowers, and the multicolored resident zebras and unicorns, as after repeated, elaborately designed efforts to trap or even shoot (with a peashooter) the fairy come to naught, the laughing children are escorted out of the garden beneath a rising moon. The encounter ends on a (perhaps unconsciously) ominous note. “Hope they find their way back sometime,” the butterfly-winged narrator concludes. “And just maybe next time they’ll stay!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
The premise is worn gossamer thin, and the joke stopped being funny, if it ever was, long ago. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 28, 2023
ISBN: 9781728263205
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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