An upbeat tale laced with a clear, much-needed message of environmental stewardship.
A crab searches for new digs.
Finding beach real estate’s hard, but hermit crab Sheldon’s shell has become very snug, and he must locate a roomier home. He has no time to lose; hungry seagulls are circling overhead. One possibility—a tin can—appears, but it’s noisy and smelly. Sheldon’s sad: A homeless crab is a sunbaked, dried-out crab. Myrtle the turtle escorts him to her beach shop, which is filled with fancy outfits. Sheldon gleefully tries on numerous, ultimately unsuitable styles, then spies a sturdy-looking plastic bottle: It’s perfect! Uh, no. Scuttling inside, Sheldon gets stuck. Myrtle watches helplessly as Sheldon rolls away and lands in a hole. Happily, a young girl named Kaia frees him, then shows him the bucket of shells she’s collected. Sheldon finally selects his perfect new home, and Kaia realizes that the shells belong to the beach, not her. Going forward, she’ll help with beach-cleanup efforts, and she organizes a group of eager kids on the spot. They work hard and clear the beach of human detritus. This lively U.K. import, written in bouncy, present-tense verse, is a loud clarion call to keep beaches free of carelessly strewn human clutter. Sheldon’s full of personality; his plight will arouse children’s empathy and hopefully inspire a “let’s get working” mindset. The colorful, lively cartoon illustrations depict both messy and pristine beach vistas. Kaia is brown-skinned; background figures are diverse.
An upbeat tale laced with a clear, much-needed message of environmental stewardship. (how can you help the environment? note on “Surfers Against Sewage”) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 4, 2024
ISBN: 9781780558301
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Buster Books
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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