Another exuberantly rhymed and illustrated animal invasion from the creators of Cats, Cats, Cats! (2001) and Dogs, Dogs, Dogs! (p. 738): “The pigs are coming to play, hooray! / The pigs are coming today. / We’d better take care to completely prepare, / A minute’s too long to delay.” Prepare how? With “a feast for ten thousand at least,” beginning with “Fried green tomatoes and mashed sweet potatoes,” ending with “plum cakes and rum cakes and crumb cakes,” and a mouthwatering menu in between. It’s all dished up in Oller’s vigorous, crowded watercolors by a cast of happy townsfolk for an even happier cast of energetic porkers who thunder in, scarf down the goodies, then before thundering out lead their hosts in a hog-wild hootenanny. As messy and sidesplitting as David McPhail’s Pigs Aplenty, Pigs Galore (1993), this parade of porcine party goers will bring the house down—and just like its rotund revelers, the tale has a twist at the end: “We’ve got to hold steady, we’ve got to get ready, / our next guests are coming—the sheep!” (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-84979-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet iteration of the “Big Bad Wolf Mellows Out” theme. Here, an old wolf does some soul searching and then learns to like vegetable stew after a half-frozen lamb appears on his doorstep, falls asleep in his arms, then wakes to give him a kiss. “I can’t eat a lamb who needs me! I might get heartburn!” he concludes. Clad in striped leggings and a sleeveless pullover decorated with bands of evergreens, the wolf comes across as anything but dangerous, and the lamb looks like a human child in a fleecy overcoat. No dreams are likely to be disturbed by this book, but hardened members of the Oshkosh set might prefer the more credible predators and sense of threat in John Rocco’s Wolf! Wolf! (March 2007) or Delphine Perrot’s Big Bad Wolf and Me (2006). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58925-067-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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