A weak effort. (Picture book. 5-8)
A horse meanders through life.
At birth a colt is named Star by an unnamed little white girl who "whispered secrets to him that no one else knew." She raises him, takes him to horse shows, and then, having grown up, sells him to a lesson barn, where he is renamed Scout. When he proves unsuitable for a lesson horse—"unsure, [he] would stop and refuse to move"—he's sold for a trail horse and called Dude. When the trail outfit shuts down, he's trained to be a therapeutic riding horse and is this time renamed Journey and meets another little white girl who whispers to him. The description-heavy text lacks action, drama, plot, and characterization—the horse gets shuffled from one situation to another, and the people are interchangeable entities. It also seems odd that an animal temperamentally unsuited to be a school horse could pass muster for a therapeutic program. Siegler's otherwise attractive and accurate watercolors depict a world in which all the important people are white (a few faraway, indistinct riders may have dark skin), and the text describing the disabled girl at the end reads condescendingly: "nobody understood her mixed-up words."
A weak effort. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-934860-06-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Shenanigan
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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
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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
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