Hoberman’s rhymes are ever a pleasure and so they are here in this staccato bit of folderol verse about taking the longest distance between two points. Silly Lilly wants a cat, but does she go scare one up at the local shelter? No. She takes the advice of her friend Sammy. First she cuts down a stand of trees, then builds a log cabin shed, then buys a cow, and when she milks the cow in her shed a cat wanders in to sample the goods. “Look! A cat has come! What fun! / You don’t have to get me one. / See, I didn’t have to do / All the work you told me to.” She isn’t called Silly for nothing. Then a mouse in the cabin frightens Sammy, who proceeds to follow Silly Lilly’s suggestion to go cut hay, gather catnip, build a bed for the cat, move the cow out of the shed, and lock the cat inside—all to be rid of the mouse. Sammy doesn’t make the connection when they return later—“Look how happy she does seem. / I bet she found a bowl of cream. / And look, the mice have gone away! / I guess they didn’t want to stay”—but then he isn’t the best friend of someone named Silly for nothing. Hoberman cares as much about the story, which is droll and warm, as she does the pleasing rhyme scheme. The well-paced repetitions in particular have the fine thrumming quality of a spoken charm. Cravath’s brightly colored illustrations fill most pages with homespun humor: Lilly all scrawny legs and bony elbows, Sammy a plump country fellow, suspenders barely holding up his trousers, and Lilly’s cat showing the evidence of its feast with one tiny tail hanging from its contented smile. A crowd-pleaser. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-202221-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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Hee haw.
45
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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. 29, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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