The loving encounters among animals of different species (and Lauricella’s real-world endeavor to help animals with special...
With its retro, appealingly soft-edged digital art, this is the engaging story of how a piglet becomes the “goat nanny” of the title.
Piney the piglet lives inside a farmhouse with his human “mom,” who bakes and vacuums but who also rescues animals, especially goats. At first “mom” just wants him to enjoy life, but Piney longs to have a job just like everyone else. “The chickens ate the bugs and the goats chomped up the weeds.” After trying to help with household chores (Piney becomes entangled in the vacuum cord), he finally finds his special niche. There’s a new goat who needs comforting, a task that Piney apparently can take on. Tiny Prospect grows strong under Piney’s care. When he moves outside, Chibs (with “curled up” legs) and Lyla (with “three legs”) show up and receive the same nurturing care. Howarth’s illustrations are bright and uncomplicated, depicting smiling animals in a somewhat idealized farm setting; readers never see “mom’s” face, just pale hands and ankles. In a short photo essay at the book’s end, Piney’s story is revealed as “The True Story.” The combination of a picture book with the factual story works to show young children how true experiences can be turned effectively into stories.
The loving encounters among animals of different species (and Lauricella’s real-world endeavor to help animals with special needs) are great examples to help children develop empathy. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63322-332-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walter Foster Jr.
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf.
A big, yellow hound dog has small, wonderful dreams.
Emma’s dreams are doggily simple. Rendered in gray, they manifest above her contentedly slumbering form: “singing, dancing, rolling in grass, splashing in water, going for walks,” and eating. After she wakes and eats, she naps again, sprawled on her back, tummy distended, the very picture of canine bliss. Pages turn, with Cooper’s lyrical text focusing on Emma and her sensations: “The days went on, shifting and taking shape, and now there were times when her whole body felt strange, but there was no stopping the days.” A gently curving line of overlapping Emmas, rising, stretching, scratching, shifting, and resettling, underscores time’s march. Adult readers may be anxious at this point, fearing Emma’s impending death with the page turn—but no, it turns out Emma’s been literally full of wonders, and she gazes mildly at a puppy emerging from her own body. Then there they are, seven little Emmas, and they now embody her dreams. Cooper’s brushy, loose watercolors, outlined in swoops of ink, complement his Emma-focused text. She resides in a human home, but her owner appears only as tan-skinned hands extending from the margin to offer a bowl of food, caress her snout, or towel off a pup. In this way, Cooper invites readers into Emma’s interiority, allowing them to sit quietly and wonder with her.
A sweet and unexpected addition to the waiting-for-baby shelf. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884763
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history.
A sonorous, soporific invitation to join woodland creatures in bedding down for the night.
As in her Moon Babies, illustrated by Amy Hevron (2019), Jameson displays a rare gift for harmonious language and rhyme. She leads off with a bear: “Come home, Big Paws. / Berry picker / Honey trickster / Shadows deepen in the glen. / Lumber back inside your den.” Continuing in the same pattern, she urges a moose (“Velvet Nose”), a deer (“Tiny Hooves”), and a succession of ever smaller creatures to find their nooks and nests as twilight deepens in Boutavant’s woodsy, autumnal scenes and snow begins to drift down. Through each of those scenes quietly walks an alert White child (accompanied by an unusually self-controlled pooch), peering through branches or over rocks at the animals in the foregrounds and sketching them in a notebook. The observer’s turn comes round at last, as a bearded parent beckons: “This way, Small Boots. / Brave trailblazer / Bright stargazer / Cabin’s toasty. Blanket’s soft. / Snuggle deep in sleeping loft.” The animals go unnamed, leaving it to younger listeners to identify each one from the pictures…if they can do so before the verses’ murmurous tempo closes their eyes.
Sweet fare for bed- or naptimes, with a light frosting of natural history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7063-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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