Solid information presented with humor and energy.
Inspired by a classroom election, punctuation marks decide to run for office in this picture book.
It’s the start of a new school year, and Miss Marks tells her students that they’ll begin by choosing a class president: “We’ll have a campaign and an election just like our country does every four years.” The kids decide on some important presidential qualities—strong leadership, kindness, and intelligence, for example—and the class nominates Bridget and Noah. Looking on, the punctuation marks think it would be fun to have their own election, so they convene in the coat closet. Apostrophe nominates Exclamation Point for his power and confidence (“I will be the best President ever!!!”) and Comma backs Question Mark (“Do you really believe in my leadership?”). The marks notice that the children’s campaign signs, lacking the proper punctuation, are confusing, so they quickly vote and return to the classroom; the corrected signs now make sense. Two final notes explain more about punctuation and democracy. By anthropomorphizing punctuation marks and linking them to the election drama, Reed (Thomas Turkey’s Terrible Tricks, 2017, etc.) is able to make a rather dry subject entertaining and fun, giving each mark an appropriate personality. The period, for example, is fussy and likes to put a stop to things: “Let’s stop the madness. Now.” The author’s faux-naïve illustrations, showing both humans and marks in a range of skin shades, are bright and fairly bounce off the page.
Solid information presented with humor and energy.Pub Date: July 1, 2018
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Plaid People Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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