A deserving if not divine little book, worthy of its pint-sized enthusiasts
Clearly The Little Dump Truck (2009) and The Little School Bus (2014) were just the prelude to Cuyler and Kolar’s most ambitious project yet.
“Perky” would not be a poor way of describing the little fire truck that shuttles its white driver, Jill, and her racially diverse fire crew all over town. Each rhyming stanza, one per spread, begins with the line “I’m a little fire truck” then proceeds in a standard abcb rhyme scheme. After rescuing a cat, the firefighters must contend with a burning building. Happily it just takes a couple “splish-splosh” squirts of the fire hose to put everything right. Aimed at toddlers and younger preschoolers, the art proves to be just as simple as the text. The digital illustrations keep the color bright, the anthropomorphized truck perky, and the situations shy of scary. Cuyler even opts to ensure that the burning building is pet- and baby-free. When it comes to true firefighting enthusiasts, more is always better, hence the endpapers’ impressive (not to mention diverse and gender-inclusive) visual dictionary of terms. (Front and rear are identical.) Alas, no fire-safety tips are included aside from the visual image of Jill and crew crawling along the floor, so continue to turn to Mike Austin’s Fire Engine No. 9 (2015) as the industry standard.
A deserving if not divine little book, worthy of its pint-sized enthusiasts . (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62779-805-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
All aboard for a spooktacularly sleepy ride!
The goodnight train is back for a not-so-scary fourth installment.
The nighttime locomotive travels through an autumnal landscape that’s bursting with Halloween tropes. As in the previous stories, bed-shaped cars are hooked up for a train ride; here, three diverse children are dressed in their Halloween finest as a skeleton, a princess, and a bee. Fans of the series will find the usual perks of a solid rhyme scheme, additional words and sounds peppering the illustrations, and pages of yawning creatures signaling that it’s time for bed. Those unfamiliar with the series will also find the book amusing, but readers who really love Halloween—or spooky things like bats, ghosts, and black cats—will enjoy it the most. As with the other installments in this series, educators and librarians will find this useful for seasonal book displays and storytimes but will probably keep it out year-round because it checks many of the boxes that signal a solid addition to any board-book library. Die-cut circles of various sizes are sprinkled across the double-page spreads, giving caregivers a chance to test young readers’ predictive skills while providing small hints at what’s to come. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
All aboard for a spooktacularly sleepy ride! (Board book. 2-5)Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3586-2607-7
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
To quote one particularly joyous double-page spread, “Oh, what a ride!”
A succession of forest creatures—and even the river itself—learn from one another and validate their relationships with both one another and the wider world.
The simplicity of the text and the stylized, comical creatures belie the depth of the message that comes through for even the youngest of readers: We are all in this together, and our differences strengthen our unity. The river “didn’t know it was a river…until” Bear accidentally begins riding down it on a piece of broken tree trunk. Bear in turn doesn’t realize he is on an adventure until Froggy lands on his back; lonely Froggy doesn’t know how many friends she has until the wary Turtles show up on the ever-more-swiftly-moving log; the Turtles learn how to enjoy the ride when Beaver climbs aboard; and so on through several more characters until they are all at the brink of a waterfall. Outstanding art perfectly complements the text, showing the animals’ differing personalities while also using color, space, and patterns to create appealing scenery. There are several hilarious double-page spreads, including one from the animals’ collective perspective, showing solely the various feet on the tree-trunk–cum-raft at the waterfall’s edge, and one requiring a 90-degree turn, showing the plummeting animals as they reach for one another—some looking worried and others, like Duck and Beaver, obviously enjoying the sudden drop.
To quote one particularly joyous double-page spread, “Oh, what a ride!” (author’s note, illustrator’s note) (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-46447-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
PERSPECTIVES
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