Bronson (Just Think, 2001, etc.) selected 19 poems, including 11 traditional Christmas carols or well-known songs such as “Silver Bells” and “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas,” each serving as a springboard for her unusual illustrations. The familiar holiday songs and a few less familiar poems are secondary to Bronson’s stellar art, done in mixed-media collage using clay, paint, fabric, paper, and bits and pieces of ribbon, lace, fur, and trim. She uses elongated, stylized shapes in her work with a strong sense of motion: a little girl stretching to place the star on the top of the tree, angels stretching across a dark red sky, and a one-horse open sleigh with the horse ready to dash off the page. Bronson often uses a face in profile superimposed on the three-dimensional clay-sculptured head of a character, sometimes with one part of the face in a lighter shade and part in darker brown. Other characters fill an entire page: a huge Santa holding a child; the three wise men with glowing golden hats and wrapped gifts; a jolly snow man with real twig arms and a cloth scarf. Her whimsical collage style is bold and colorful, full of textures and motion. The poems and songs may be old chestnuts, but Bronson’s art is as fresh and surprising as an unexpected snowfall. (Poetry. 2-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6755-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
The words to a Christmas song from the 1950s serve as the text for this exploration of a most unusual Christmas gift. An unnamed little girl in pink pajamas is the first-person narrator, explaining in detail why she wants a hippopotamus as her present. Various views of the hippo are shown in a slightly confusing, nonlinear time sequence, but then why would time proceed in a straightforward fashion with a hippo in the house? Santa is shown pushing the hippo through the door, and the following pages show the little girl caring for her hippo, unwrapping it as a Christmas package (a different packaging treatment is shown on the cover), and then flying off with Santa as the hippo pulls the sleigh. Though the little girl and the words to the song are rather ordinary, the lively, lavender hippo in Whatley’s illustrations is a delightful creature, with a big, pink bow on its head and expressive, bulging eyes. (In fact, that hippo deserves a name and a story of its own.) The music and song lyrics are included in the final spread. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-052942-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
For toddlers unafraid of typical Halloween imagery.
A troop of cats traverse a spooky landscape as they make their way to a party hosted by ghosts.
Each double-page spread shows the felines’ encounters with the likes of an owl, jack-o’-lanterns or a bat. One or two of these creepy meetings may be too abstract for the youngest readers, as the cats hear eerie noises with no discernible source on the page. The text, which consists of one rhyming couplet per scene, mostly scans despite a couple of wobbles: “Five black cats get a bit of a scare / As the flip-flapping wings of a bat fill the air.” The sleek, slightly retro art, likely created using a computer, depicts the cats cavorting at night through a shadowy cityscape, the countryside and a haunted house; they may scare some toddlers and delight others. A brighter color palette would have given the project a friendlier, more universal appeal. Luckily, the well-lit, final party scene provides a playful conclusion.
For toddlers unafraid of typical Halloween imagery. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-58925-611-8
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2014
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