Using long, stylized figures on chipped-paint backgrounds for a folk-art look, Jarrie tours common US sights, locales and symbols in this alphabetical showcase. Fortunately for young viewers, he includes explanatory notes at the end, because several of the scenes—“A is for alligator,” “O is for oranges”—are unidentifiably generic and the musician standing at the “X-roads” would otherwise be a lost reference to anyone unfamiliar with Robert Johnson lore. Even so, his information is sometimes iffy, including, for instance, a simplistic account of the crack in the Liberty Bell, and the misleading implication that WWII’s code-talkers were all Navajo. As the Provensens and others have demonstrated, this homespun visual idiom can work well as illustration, but here the ABC format is strictly a pretext. For background on our land and its symbols, Sheila Keenan’s O Say Can You See? (2004), illustrated by Ann Boyajian, is only the latest of several more reliable sources. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 15, 2005
ISBN: 1-4027-1619-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
Scotton makes a stylish debut with this tale of a sleepless sheep—depicted as a blocky, pop-eyed, very soft-looking woolly with a skinny striped nightcap of unusual length—trying everything, from stripping down to his spotted shorts to counting all six hundred million billion and ten stars, twice, in an effort to doze off. Not even counting sheep . . . well, actually, that does work, once he counts himself. Dawn finds him tucked beneath a rather-too-small quilt while the rest of his flock rises to bathe, brush and riffle through the Daily Bleat. Russell doesn’t have quite the big personality of Ian Falconer’s Olivia, but more sophisticated fans of the precocious piglet will find in this art the same sort of daffy urbanity. Quite a contrast to the usual run of ovine-driven snoozers, like Phyllis Root’s Ten Sleepy Sheep, illustrated by Susan Gaber (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059848-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
The creators of Punctuation Takes a Vacation (2003) sentence readers to a good time with this follow-up. Feeling left out after the children in Mr. Wright’s class thunder outside for a Field Day, the nouns and verbs left in the classroom decide to organize events of their own. But having chosen like parts of speech for partners—“Glue, Markers and Tape stuck together. Shout wanted to be with Cheer. So did Chew and Eat.”—it quickly becomes apparent that as opposing teams they can’t actually do anything. Depicting the Nouns as objects and the Verbs as hyperactive v-shaped figures, Rowe creates a set of high-energy scenes, climaxing in a Tug of Words and other contests once the participants figure out that they’ll work better mixed rather than matched. This playful introduction to words recalls Ruth Heller’s Kites Sail High (1998) and Merry-Go-Round (1990) for liveliness, and closes with several simple exercises and games to get children into the act. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: March 15, 2006
ISBN: 0-8234-1982-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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