You better watch out for this excellent early reader.
Jack is back, and he’s on Santa’s “BAD list.”
Barnett and Pizzoli’s rascally rabbit Jack returns in a seventh title in their early-reader series. This time, readers discover that while the Lady and Rex the dog (with whom Jack lives) are on the nice list, Jack is on Santa’s naughty list. (In deference to emergent readers’ skills, the text labels these the “GOOD” and “BAD” lists.) There’s also another list in this story—Jack’s wish list, which spills over from one page onto the next two. “Oh boy. That’s a long list,” reads the wry text, which then goes on to speculate as to whether Jack will receive anything but coal. The story that ensues is well paced and accessible to new readers, its brief chapters cleverly interrogating the very premise that anyone might be wholly good or bad. Barnett’s textual restraint allows Pizzoli to ramp up the humor as pictures highlight just how bad Jack has been—and how good. The result is a humane and humorous secular Christmas story that offers the gift of supporting readers’ burgeoning decoding abilities with a well-developed, comical story. Both the Lady and Santa present White. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-13-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
You better watch out for this excellent early reader. (Early reader. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-11398-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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