Jeffers returns to illustrating Brown (Baby Animals, 1989) as she sets four previously unpublished poems to bright, crisply detailed outdoor scenes featuring an animated teddy bear investigating an idyllic natural world. In the first, a sort of companion piece to Runaway Bunny, Bear toddles off into a field of tall May flowers, but sings to a left-behind parent that though distances may separate them, "It's a long time that I'll love you, / Never, never go away." The bear/child then bends down to examine a world in which "little things creep / In their green grass forests deep . . . ." Next he experiences as much as hears "The Song of Wind and Rain," and finally finishes with an excursion along a river bank to watch little boats go "Slow slow / In the soft fall of the snow." Though Jeffers confesses that she isn't sure whether Brown considered these rough drafts or finished pieces, they read smoothly enough, and the lovely pictures make them into small stories that capture their sense as well as their depth of feeling perfectly. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7868-0509-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
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