A story of such gentleness that it really deserves to be called a lullaby, though there is no nighty-night involved. What there is, though, is the great golden thing that Bramble Bear has glimpsed. It caught him so by surprise that he didn’t really get a good look at it before he rushed off to tell Gimli what he had seen. Gimli is a magician with a wonderful well in his backyard, a well that loves the flowers Gimli gives to it as thanks each springtime (for there are no flowers across the land at any other time of year). Gimli tries to coax from Bramble Bear more details about the great golden thing. Ultimately, they decide it is “a great golden thing that flies yet rests on a leg that is green and stands on the ground.” There is nothing to do but go see the thing, so off they set and meet their friend Hopple Hare on the way, who joins the investigation. They are stopped short by Brindle Bear, who announces that her sunflower is most likely what they are after, a flower she nourishes from Gimli’s spring. They are disappointed at first, but decide that it will be enjoyable to see the flower anyway. They go and offer the flower a little dance, then gather some fallen petals to bring back to the spring. The art has a certain galumphing quality—Brindle and Bramble look like they could have just come from Jellystone Park—but it also has a dreamy softness that goes perfectly well with the mild, peaceable tale. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7358-1593-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2002
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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Even more alliterative hanky-panky from the creators of The Wonky Donkey (2010).
Operating on the principle (valid, here) that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, Smith and Cowley give their wildly popular Wonky Donkey a daughter—who, being “cute and small,” was a “dinky donkey”; having “beautiful long eyelashes” she was in consequence a “blinky dinky donkey”; and so on…and on…and on until the cumulative chorus sails past silly and ludicrous to irresistibly hysterical: “She was a stinky funky plinky-plonky winky-tinky,” etc. The repeating “Hee Haw!” chorus hardly suggests what any audience’s escalating response will be. In the illustrations the daughter sports her parent’s big, shiny eyes and winsome grin while posing in a multicolored mohawk next to a rustic boombox (“She was a punky blinky”), painting her hooves pink, crossing her rear legs to signal a need to pee (“winky-tinky inky-pinky”), demonstrating her smelliness with the help of a histrionic hummingbird, and finally cozying up to her proud, evidently single parent (there’s no sign of another) for a closing cuddle.
Should be packaged with an oxygen supply, as it will incontestably elicit uncontrollable gales of giggles. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-60083-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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