Simple and sweet.
A parent’s love for their child is limitless.
“If you think that you’re a camel, / then I think I’ll grow a hump. / If you think that you’re a grasshopper, / I’ll have to learn to jump!” As children imagine themselves as everything from a dog to a snake, their caregivers play along, too. The illustrations show various families pretending to be different animals, for example, hopping on pogo sticks like kangaroos or holding rolled up papers to their noses to imitate elephants; some kids and adults are even dressed like the animals in question. In the end, we see families cuddled together happily. The story feels similar to Margaret Wise Brown’s The Runaway Bunny (1942), with a “wherever you go, I’ll go” theme. Deas’ warm and cozy illustrations, rendered in watercolor, acrylic, ink, and pencil crayon, depict people diverse in skin tone, body type, and age; an older adult sports tattoos. In one captivating layout, an adult and a child touch noses while swimming with a school of fish, the dotted blues of the ocean adding depth to the scene. Toddlers and adults alike will enjoy sharing this story. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Simple and sweet. (Board book. 0-2)Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781459835559
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes.
Another entry in the how-much-I-love-you genre.
The opening spread shows a blue elephant-and-child pair, the child atop the adult, white hearts arcing between their uplifted trunks: “You’re a gift and a blessing in every way. / I love you more each and every day.” From there, the adult elephant goes on to tell the child how they are loved more than all sorts of things, some rhyming better than others: “I love you more than all the spaghetti served in Rome, // and more than each and every dog loves her bone.” More than stars, fireflies, “all the languages spoken in the world,” “all the dancers that have ever twirled,” all the kisses ever given and miles ever driven, “all the adventures you have ahead,” and “all the peanut butter and jelly spread on bread!” Representative of all the world’s languages are “I love you” in several languages (with no pronunciation help): English, Sioux, French, German, Swahili, Spanish, Hawaiian, Chinese, and Arabic (these two last in Roman characters only). Bold colors and simple illustrations with no distracting details keep readers’ focus on the main ideas. Dashed lines give the artwork (and at least one word on every spread) the look of 2-D sewn toys.
So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8398-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Nine-year-old Peter Warren Hatcher has resigned himself to losing the battle of sibling rivalry; his two-and-a-half-year-old brother Fudge manages to get all the attention — upstaging Peter in front of his father's business associates, ruining the poster he has made for a school project, getting lost at the movies and (the unkindest cut of all) swallowing his pet turtle. Fudge's antics are standard toddler attention-getters (and his selection as star of a TV commercial considerably overrates his potential as an entertainer), but Peter's jaundiced observations exploit their risibility to the fullest. Yet the absence of any palpable jealousy or anger in Peter's reportage causes it to degenerate into a series of momentarily amusing anecdotes, and, if not exactly a nothing, Peter is considerably less than might have been expected from the author of Then Again, Maybe I Won't (1971).
Pub Date: March 23, 1972
ISBN: 0525469311
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1972
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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