A fantasy grounded in real life with a gentle message about loyal friendship.
In Monte’s picture book, a little girl is befriended by a very unusual bike.
When Ellery discovers an old, abandoned purple bicycle, it springs to joyful life, shaking off “mud, dints, and rust” and happily following Ellery home at her hopeful invitation: “Come with me?” The bike teaches the child how to ride it and the two become inseparable playmates. As Ellery grows bigger, the bicycle obligingly grows to fit her. It comforts the girl when she’s sad and even helps her make friends with the prickly boy next door, who joins in their adventures. The story’s fantasy element is delightfully matter-of-fact, as nobody questions how the bike came to life or where it came from. It simply is—and so is the underlying tenderness that Monte brings to her narrative as Ellery passes through childhood to her “daredevil” teenage years and adulthood. For a time, the bicycle gathers dust and spiderwebs, but the satisfying, celebratory conclusion is sure to please the preschool- and elementary-school–age children in the book’s target audience. Prolific children’s book illustrator Saunders matches the narrative’s action and tone with delicate, expressive watercolor-and-ink images that charm with subtle detail and bring the magical bicycle to life without anthropomorphizing it.
A fantasy grounded in real life with a gentle message about loyal friendship.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9875130-7-6
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Bonny Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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
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