Smoothly combining images of rocks, leaves, flowers, and other natural items with painted figures in bright, realistic, low-relief digital collages, George takes her audience to ground level for a game of pass-the-secret. What Mr. Snail tells mouse is immediately passed on to a beetle, who informs the turtle, thus beginning a long chain of gossip that ends at Miss Snail. The secret, revealed by Miss Snail’s answer, is “I love Miss Snail,” and unlike the usual result of “Telephone,” it plainly isn’t garbled at all on its circuitous route. George keeps her text to a minimum, and uses a different verb for each exchange: “The moth shook it to the bee, / who buzzed it to the caterpillar. / The caterpillar / tickled it to the worm. / The worm / hummed it to the chickadee.” Reminiscent of A Kiss for Little Bear, this offers unusual measures of verbal and visual delights. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-029598-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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