Just as prickly as its heroine, this book requires an audience ready for its sobering back story.
Violet the cat finds it hard to make friends with her new owners’ two dogs until they show their loyalty despite her unfriendliness.
Casanova’s energetic text begins with a brief mention of Violet’s previous home, where there was “too little food and too much shouting.” Presumably that’s why she hisses and spits at the people who stop by her cage at the shelter. Most walk away, but one couple decides to take her home. Once there she terrorizes George and Zippity, heroes of Some Dog! (2007). Things change after a trio of stray dogs finds her alone in the yard. Once rescued, Violet undergoes a serious attitude adjustment. From the cover that shows a wide-eyed, anxious-looking cat to the implication that Violet’s earlier experiences shaped her personality to the fairly scary attack by the stray dogs, this is not a typically perky pet-adoption tale. Hoyt’s illustrations, which appear to combine watercolor and pencil, set the story in and around a house by a lake and offer a mostly realistic look at the action. The cozy setting and some visual humor lighten the mood, as does Casanova’s use of nonsense words to convey the barking and meowing of the various animals.
Just as prickly as its heroine, this book requires an audience ready for its sobering back story. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-374-37123-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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