Toddlers ready for simple stories will find better choices among regular picture books.
This very busy board book seems to want to be a toy.
Sturdy, wipeable board pages and layered cutouts make a dense, leafy forest habitat for an elephant preparing for his birthday party. The illustrations give a good sense of the rain forest, but the plants’ multiple shades of brown, green, and orange disguise the other animals almost too completely. Finding the gazelle, monkey, and parrot hiding in the greenery could be a challenge for toddlers who do not yet know what to look for. Two extra-thick board-over-foam interior pages provide a nesting place for an elephant cutout that acts as a sort of one-piece puzzle designed for children to play with as they read; little ones will likely grab the elephant and not want to let it go. Young children most in need of board books may not sit still for the somewhat wordy story. Elephant's repeated question, “Do you know that today is an important day?” could serve as a refrain, but slight rewording each time he asks makes it difficult for toddlers to anticipate the question and join in. Companion title Here Comes Leo Lion has many of the same problems, plus a rather heavy-handed lesson, in which Lion learns, rather quickly, that boasting about his wildness will not win him friends.
Toddlers ready for simple stories will find better choices among regular picture books. (Board book.1-3)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1581-2
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Toddlers are better served by a chorus of the original, accompanied by the finger motions
Yet another remake of the classic fingerplay.
Burton and Rescek need to find a new song to parody or, better yet, come up with something original. As in earlier remakes—The Itsy Bitsy Pilgrim, The Istsy Bitsy Bunny, The Itsy Bitsy Reindeer (all 2016), and The Itsy Bitsy Snowman (2015)—the words are meant to be sung to the tune of the favorite nursery rhyme. In this outing, the rhymes work, but the meter is clunky. Rescek’s characters are cheery enough as they celebrate the transition from winter to spring. The question is why ducklings should replace spiders. “Down came the rain and chased the snow away” is simply not as satisfying as “washed the spider out.” The elements of danger, pluck, and mastery inherent in the original song are missing, as are the actions. A scene of anthropomorphic animals of different species sharing a den confuses rather than enlightens. There is no clear change from winter to spring; the color palette throughout is bright and springlike, and the duckling is about as realistic as an Easter Peep. Sturdy board pages may stand up to lots of handling, but young children are unlikely to ask for it more than once.
Toddlers are better served by a chorus of the original, accompanied by the finger motions . (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8655-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more...
Following on the successful Five Little Pumpkins (2003), Yaccarino teams with Rabe for bunnies.
The five pastel bunnies are cute enough, and the rhymes are accurate, if somewhat wordy for toddlers. But without a clear one-to-one relationship between the words and the pictures, it is not always clear which bunny is speaking and what is being counted. The bunnies, identified as first, second, and so on, hop around the pages instead of staying in a consistent order as the rhyme implies. Naming them by color might have been a better choice, but that would mean abandoning the finger-play counting-rhyme formula. The children who show up to hunt the eggs are a multicultural cast of cartoonish figures with those in the background drawn as blue and green silhouettes. Though the text on the back cover invites children to count the eggs, there is no hint as to how many eggs they should find. Neither the verse nor the pictures provide counting assistance. The youngest children will not care about any of this; they will be content to point out the different colors of the bunnies and the patterns on the eggs.
An acceptable and sturdy addition to the Easter basket for baby bunnies deemed too young to handle Dorothy Kunhardt's more satisfying but fragile classic, Pat the Bunny. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-225339-2
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HarperFestival
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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