A sweet reminder that friends are nice, but sometimes following your heart is best.
It’s spring! Pascal the platypus wants to bring the season into his home by painting his room. But when his friends offer advice and help him out, nothing is straightforward.
Pascal lives in a nautically inspired underground home. Blue and white are the main colors, but when spring arrives he feels like a change. When he asks his friends to help him choose the best color, everyone has an opinion. Cardigan the rabbit suggest orange. As the friends cover over the blue and white with orange, turtle Fancy declares that it looks like a carrot and suggests green instead. The friends turn the room green, but Zelda, a frog, doesn’t like the change. She suggests pink. As the room turns pink, big, brown dog Ringo does not like it. He believes all the colors would be best. “Sploosh! Splat!” Now “Pascal does not like it—not one bit!” He takes his shovel and does what he does best: he makes himself a new home. And what color is it? Blue and white, just as it was before. As the room changes colors readers can follow along lifting the flaps to peek inside a closet, a cabinet, the bathtub, and even behind the pictures on the wall. Observant readers will also have fun following the mice that share Pascal’s home.
A sweet reminder that friends are nice, but sometimes following your heart is best. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 979-1-0276-0139-4
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Sure to have little ones giggling.
Jacques is a hedgehog with a big secret: “I wear real, bona fide underwear.”
Our narrator received a mysterious package one day; an illustration shows a pair of underwear tied to a balloon with a note “from the Universe” floating down into Jacques’ burrow. Hedgehogs don’t wear underwear, however. Will Jacques be shunned? Jacques worries but comes to a decision: “I have to wear them. When I do I feel special.” Determined, Jacques, who’s been invited to a party, makes a dramatic entrance, with undies in hand. Jacques’ declaration (“I WEAR UNDERWEAR”) is met with remarks of dismay, before another hedgehog opens up about similar fears and shows off a pair of cowboy boots. More hedgehogs introduce themselves with their own confessions. The story ends with Jacques unveiling a painting of the underwear in a gallery filled with hedgehogs wearing all sorts of attire. Though the book is simple in plot, characters, and setting, it wins in its balance of bathroom humor, dramatic storytelling, and celebrations of individual expression. French words are peppered throughout, adding to the fun without detracting from the story for those unfamiliar with the language. The cartoonish illustrations brim with fun; Valdez relies heavily on geometric shapes (triangle noses for the hedgehogs; huge circles for their eyes). Details such as speech bubbles and recurring turtle and snake characters contribute to the outlandish humor.
Sure to have little ones giggling. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781250814388
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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BOOK REVIEW
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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