A delightful, cleverly written combination of wackiness and academia. When Poppywise’s dog Pete (who always eats everything in sight, as noted in What Pete Ate from A-Z [2001]) sneaks into school, the result is inevitable: he gobbles up not just an entire orchestra’s instruments and “the fractions in a box marked fractions,” but also a 26-volume encyclopedia. Soon he’s using words like “ergo” and “empirically” and explaining gravity and light bulbs. It’s temporary, but that’s okay; the best thing happening here is not Pete’s new talent but the luscious spattering of real subjects (Gertrude Stein, trapezoids, gerunds, The Bill of Rights) into the story. It’s interesting how successful the illustrations are—colorful, energetic, and varied—considering the absence of technical drawing skills. The humor and details won’t work for group readings, but this is an excellent choice for early readers to try on their own or with a playful adult. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: July 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-399-23478-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
Big fun for new readers who are ready to turn their Where’s Waldo skills to finding text.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Big Bunny!
Controlled, repetitive text invites children to read short sentences directing them to find “a foot…a hand…a tail,” and so on. These named body parts belong to a figure that isn’t wholly visible until the book’s end, provoking readers to search them out in the detailed images. Their stark whiteness makes them stand out on the pages, which depict a busy, vibrant setting reminiscent of those in Richard Scarry books and are likewise populated by anthropomorphic animals going about their days. Shifting perspective and scale make it clear that the creature is not just another one of these animals, and many readers will use the title and cover image to infer that they belong to the eponymous Big Bunny. The reveal at the conclusion is that Big Bunny is not a giant but a large helium balloon of the sort seen in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. While this clever conceit is carried out with accessible text, there is a little quibble: the saturation and intentional busyness of the illustrations leaves little rest for new readers’ eyes. The sentences and vocabulary are simple, but finding them on the page is the challenge here.
Big fun for new readers who are ready to turn their Where’s Waldo skills to finding text. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3458-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises.
Pout-Pout goes off the deep end.
Plainly afflicted with anger issues, Mr. Fish leverages a broken knickknack, difficulty finding glue, and the mild reactions of his neighbors to his plight into a towering, out-of-control tantrum. Mrs. Squid offers a tried-and-true (though, at least for a fish, physically impossible) counterstrategy: “To get started, simply breathe. / Then slowly count from one to ten / To counteract the seethe.” Miss Shimmer, another fish, suggests using his words to talk out his feelings…which he does (though only in the pictures, as Diesen declines to use her words to describe what he actually says). Finally, “with words and self-compassion / I bring anger to a stop,” and once he’s gotten his “grrrrr” out, the glue even turns up so that in no time fish and fracture are both “good as new.” Unlike the “seethe” in Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry… (1999) or Polly Dunbar’s Red Red Red (2020), the rage here comes across as manufactured rather than genuine—and the coping techniques are more described in general terms than actually demonstrated. Hanna’s cartoon cast of fancifully colored deep-sea denizens is as googly-eyed as ever. He adds some amusing details, as with the labels on Mr. Fish’s storage bins (“Might Need Someday” and “Not Sure will look later”), but the souvenir from “Machoo Poochy” is an unfortunate choice. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)
An undistinguished addition to the infuriatingly overstuffed shelves of anger-management treatises. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-30935-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
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