An affirming adventure.
An unusual week disrupts a mole’s peace.
Pippo’s world couldn’t be comfier. Each day, he sips his tea and types up his stories; his is a life of routine. But one morning, he wakes to find tentacled purple plants dangling from his ceiling and leaking liquid, undeterred by his insistent pokes of disapproval. The next day, Pippo happens upon his previous inanimate belongings hightailing it away. Perhaps strangest of all, on the third morning, the stump that he calls home sprouts four creepily gnarled legs and sidles straight toward a nearby babbling brook. In a moment of ill-advised curiosity, Pippo opens the door and plunges straight into the water. He clambers atop his now-unmoored front door and drifts breathlessly downstream. Once safely ashore, he makes a serendipitous discovery—his home and its wares are sitting gleaming in a glen, largely immobile, functional, and only slightly worse for wear. Inspired by the week’s whirlwind, Pippo plops down to write, settling into a routine but now much more open to the unknown. Cosmic horror for nervous kids, Wen’s text dramatizes the departure from the predictable with an emotional reality that many anxious readers will recognize. Twee, vintage-feeling illustrations prove just spooky enough to emphasize how disconcerting change can be; the aesthetic complements the narrative’s kookiness without straying far from Pippo’s hygge ideal. Frequent onomatopoeia makes for an appealingly immersive storytime experience.
An affirming adventure. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9780063288959
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
Music takes center stage and bullies get properly pun-ished in this hearty and wholesome howl.
In this picture book from singer Parton and co-author Perl, a small French bulldog goes to Nashville, joins a band, fends off bullies, and meets one of the queens of country music.
Promising at the outset that this is just the first of a series of adventures starring her beloved “god-dog,” Parton goes on to hit all the conventional thematic notes. Inspired by musical dreams, Billy heads for Nashville. After a “ruff day” in which being scorned by big dogs for not being a “true muttropolitan” leaves him feeling “lower than a stick on the ground,” he eats some flowers, strums some tunes, forms a band with a trio of little dogs, and, after sending the big pooches packing, trots out a “pawsome” performance at the “Battle of the Bow-Wows.” And from there it’s on to the Grand Ole Opry to hear his big-haired favorite singer warble out lines from her song “Makin’ Fun Ain’t Funny,” about celebrating differences rather than mocking them. Haley slips those lines, along with references to “Jowlene” and “I will pawlways love you,” into painted scenes of an all-dog-or-Dolly cast set against swirls of music and simply drawn backdrops. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Music takes center stage and bullies get properly pun-ished in this hearty and wholesome howl. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780593661574
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2023
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