Another way to banish imagination’s monsters, as well as being great fun to read, alone or aloud—with, of course,...
Large monsters are hungry for little monsters when they wake from their snoozes…but one little monster has a clever plan to scare them off.
Big, winding ribbons of ZZZZZZZs and alliterative foolery take center stage here as, armed with a microphone and recording device, a diminutive green fuzzball creeps past a series of much larger sleeping monsters. “First is Norris. He has a monster cold. While he sleeps, his tiny toothypegs chitter and chatter and his knobbly knees knock.” Other nappers “jibber-jabber,” “tippy-tap” with “terribly tatty toenails,” or issue alimentary “gurgles and growls” as they saw away. And so, when the sleepers at last wake and cast about for a snack, it’s their own noises, fed back at HIGH VOLUME, that put them to flight and allow the tiny trickster to bed down peacefully in a comfy shoe. Depicted in scribbles and scrabbles and appropriately loud colors, Hodgkinson’s collage monsters look like huge, comical cousins to Ed Emberley’s Big Green anxiety-banisher.
Another way to banish imagination’s monsters, as well as being great fun to read, alone or aloud—with, of course, exaggerated sound effects. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8660-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A humorous, somewhat unoriginal offering—for kids who prefer monsters to dinosaurs.
Who says monsters can only be frightful?
Although monsters roar, snarl, grumble, growl and howl, Smith’s playful text asserts that they also know how to behave. The text’s cheeky humor is immediately apparent as the tasks the little monsters carry out involve putting on clean underwear and combing cooties out of their fur. Illustrations extend the text about eating a “well-rounded breakfast” by depicting a box of “Swamp Munch Cereal” with “Free Bugs Inside” alongside a carton of “Mantis Milk.” Such playful intraiconic work affirms the interdependence of art and text, but the occasional indistinctness of the art and the sometimes-cluttered layout of the pages undermine the overall cohesion of the work as a whole. Furthermore, readers familiar with Jane Yolen and Mark Teague’s How Do Dinosaurs… series may find that this title cuts a bit too close to the line between similar and derivative in its execution.
A humorous, somewhat unoriginal offering—for kids who prefer monsters to dinosaurs. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8652-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Pete may seem like an appealing role model to adults, but any child who has experienced the smirching of a new pair of shoes...
An imperturbable blue cat walks along and sings his song regardless of what he steps in.
Pete the Cat loves his white Chucks so much that he sings a repetitive ditty: “I love my white shoes, / I love my white shoes, / I love my white shoes.” (In order to accompany himself, he removes the two sneakers from his front feet and picks up an electric guitar.) Presumably not looking where he is going, he steps into a “large pile” of strawberries. The bright gouache illustrations depict Pete standing atop a mountain of red fruits—on it, not really in it, but no matter. His shoes turn red; Pete thinks to himself that “everything is cool!” and sings about his red shoes. Then—“Oh no!”—he steps into a heap of blueberries. “What color did it turn his shoes?” asks the narrator. All the children who have learned basic color theory will cry, “Purple!” and feel betrayed when the page turn indicates that Pete’s sneakers have in fact turned blue. A walk through some mud turns them brown, and then a stroll through a bucket of water turns them white again. (Now they go “squeak squeak squeak” as he walks.) Pete’s ability to shrug off the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without even opening his eyes all the way is a quality many parents might wish their children shared, but it makes him awfully hard to relate to.
Pete may seem like an appealing role model to adults, but any child who has experienced the smirching of a new pair of shoes probably won’t buy the cool he’s peddling. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-190622-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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