This piggie will find her followers among the graduates of Peppa Pig and the like.
Meet Gracie LaRoo, a sweet swine who loves to swim.
In the first of this collection of four pig tales, young Gracie suffers performance anxiety at the Pig Jubilee, a synchronized-swimming contest. She doesn’t want to let her slightly older teammates down, but this is her first competition. When her purple spangly bag (with all her swimming gear) goes missing, Gracie is even more distracted. She perseveres (finding the bag) and gains the confidence to help her team win. Next, thanks to her swimming skills, she’s asked to be in a Hog Heaven Studios picture with famed actress Tilda Swinetune. Gracie is anxious again, but her creativity solves a problem on the set, and movie magic ensues. Later, Gracie and her troupe run into problems performing on a cruise ship, and then she returns to her alma trotter to speak to the piglets about her success. Qualey’s easily read, short tales for those just attempting chapters will satisfy, though more-mature readers may find that the facile solutions to problems don’t hold their interest. The stories exude girl power, however, since the tales are full of confident female…pigs. Litten’s colored-pencil illustrations grace nearly every page and match the text in tone and energy.
This piggie will find her followers among the graduates of Peppa Pig and the like. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5158-1458-0
Page Count: 129
Publisher: Picture Window Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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 first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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