Woolbur is an excellent role model of self-confidence and positivity.
An excited Woolbur bursts out of bed on the first day of school, confident and ready to take the experience by the horns (an intention that perhaps inspires the exuberant hairdo he has created with red string).
While Maa isn’t sure Woolbur is ready, Paa doubts the school’s readiness for Woolbur, and indeed, Woolbur is one character who is fairly bursting with personality, and he’s not at all concerned with what others think of him. No matter how positively criticism is couched or what his classmates’ complaints might be, Woolbur’s response is the same: “I know….Isn’t it great?” His creativity comes out in the way he writes his name and in his modern art piece, and he takes the school lunch and the noisiness and newness of the playground games in stride. The end of Woolbur’s day brings things full circle to a sweet tuck-in by his parents. The watercolor-and-pencil illustrations feature much the same things many readers will find in their own schools, only tweaked slightly to accommodate the anthropomorphized, multispecies animal cast (the salad bar is labeled “grain,” “hay,” “clover,” and “bones,” and the school bus is a hay-filled wagon pulled by a tractor). Careful observers will see his classmates begin to relax and enjoy their days, his attitude contagious.
Woolbur is an excellent role model of self-confidence and positivity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-136657-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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