Despite the awkward writing, children will have no beef with King Lion’s inability to wait for the guests.
Someone has snatched the tender roast from the top of King Lion’s meaty birthday “cake,” so chef Tarantula sets out to find the culprit.
To a chorus of “Who is the beef thief?” (reminiscent, to parents and grandparents at least, of the old “Where’s the beef?” meme), Tarantula investigates by intrepidly climbing into the notably unclean mouths of Gorilla, Giraffe and other invited guests. The prose clumsily switches between past and present tense, and Bat’s reply when Tarantula asks permission to look in his mouth—“I’d rather not”—isn’t the only off-kilter line. Still, Tarantula’s loud “Busted!” when he catches King Lion sneaking a further chew gives the ensuing messy party an appropriately emphatic kickoff. Faas illustrates the quest with scribbly, lightly spattered cartoon scenes featuring a small, very untarantulalike spider in a toque and a menagerie of much larger creatures. These are first seen engaged in assembling party dishes of their own, then amicably gathering at an outdoor table to sip aperitifs and chow down.
Despite the awkward writing, children will have no beef with King Lion’s inability to wait for the guests. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-935954-44-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lemniscaat USA
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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