“What an adventure!” Fledgling astronauts who pull the levers and tabs that send her there and back will feel like...
Maisy finds a new world to conquer.
Watching the setting sun give way to the moon and stars (with the help of an arced slider) and wondering what it’s like up there, Maisy blasts off for a three-day trip through space. Feeling “light and floaty” after landing on the lunar surface, she plants a flag (a red-and-blue mouse on a field of yellow), admires the distant Earth, rides her moon buggy over bumps, and then returns to her home planet with a triumphant splashdown. Elementally simple as the narrative and the cartoon illustrations are, they nevertheless convey both specialized vocabulary such as “satellite” and “landing module” and technical information—one pop-up, for instance, shows the stages of Maisy’s rocket separating, and elsewhere, a distance gauge on her control panel reads “225,622 miles,” which is the moon’s distance at perigee.
“What an adventure!” Fledgling astronauts who pull the levers and tabs that send her there and back will feel like companions on the voyage. (Pop-up picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9040-3
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original...
A sweetened, condensed version of the best-selling picture book, The Kissing Hand.
As in the original, Chester Raccoon is nervous about attending Owl’s night school (raccoons are nocturnal). His mom kisses him on the paw and reminds him, “With a Kissing Hand… / We’ll never be apart.” The text boils the story down to its key elements, causing this version to feel rushed. Gone is the list of fun things Chester will get to do at school. Fans of the original may be disappointed that this board edition uses a different illustrator. Gibson’s work is equally sentimental, but her renderings are stiff and flat in comparison to the watercolors of Harper and Leak. Very young readers will probably not understand that Owl’s tree, filled with opossums, a squirrel, a chipmunk and others, is supposed to be a school.
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original shouldn’t look to this version as replacement for their page-worn copies. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-933718-77-4
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Tanglewood Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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