Love conquers all, including a pair of initially snippy chameleons.
A couple of chameleons literally fall in love.
Cyrus’ eponymous chameleon returns with his friends Mike and Polly in this follow-up to Invisible Lizard (2017). Napoleon is happy with his lot. The branch he calls home in the tropical forest—lushly illustrated here by Atkins with vines, moss, ferns, and fungi—bounces and rings with their play. But when Mike and Polly find mates to spend their time with, Napoleon is soon all alone. He carves a big, lonely heart into his branch, which weakens the limb, and it snaps. Down falls Napoleon to a lower branch, where there happens to be another chameleon, Josephine. “Yikes!” says Napoleon. “A girl!” Their relationship starts out a little rocky—she accuses him of imitating her, and he responds, “Well, excuse me for being a chameleon”—but they eventually meet each other halfway, and they spend a lovely evening together under the stars. Despite a couple new words for readers’ vocabularies (“warty lumpstool”; “whiffle blister bud”), not much new ground is turned by the story, but the artwork is an eyeful. The forest is richly colored, and the chameleons change suit to match, with their independently rotating eyeballs taking everything in. Josephine even turns into a starry night to mimic their evening under the sky.
Love conquers all, including a pair of initially snippy chameleons. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-53411-015-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, if oft-told, story.
A plush toy rabbit bonds with a boy and watches him grow into adulthood.
The boy receives the blue bunny for his birthday and immediately becomes attached to it. Unbeknownst to him, the ungendered bunny is sentient; it engages in dialogue with fellow toys, giving readers insight into its thoughts. The bunny's goal is to have grand adventures when the boy grows up and no longer needs its company. The boy spends many years playing imaginatively with the bunny, holding it close during both joyous and sorrowful times and taking it along on family trips. As a young man, he marries, starts a family, and hands over the beloved toy to his toddler-aged child in a crib. The bunny's epiphany—that he does not need to wait for great adventures since all his dreams have already come true in the boy's company—is explicitly stated in the lengthy text, which is in many ways similar to The Velveteen Rabbit (1922). The illustrations, which look hand-painted but were digitally created, are moderately sentimental with an impressionistic dreaminess (one illustration even includes a bunny-shaped cloud in the sky) and a warm glow throughout. The depiction of a teenage male openly displaying his emotions—hugging his beloved childhood toy for example—is refreshing. All human characters present as White expect for one of the boy’s friends who is Black.
A sweet, if oft-told, story. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72825-448-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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