Math, travel, friendship, and ingenuity blend for a quirky, entertaining, and satisfying tale.
For the price of 5 cents, almost anything is possible!
Ben, a determined kid with light skin and spiky dark hair, finds and earns nickels to buy a treat at the fair. He doesn’t expect to find the world’s longest licorice rope for only 5 cents, but for that price, how can he refuse? Following the rope ends up being a journey around the world, and somehow, the entrepreneurial, light-skinned girl who sold him the rope is always there with what he needs (a boat, a lion-proof outfit, a pyramid tour, a hot air balloon, and more)—at the cost of 5 cents per item. Playful, detailed, cartoonlike illustrations show our plucky hero as he travels, engages in adventure, spends his nickels—and gets very, very tired. What’s at the end of the rope? A dark-skinned child named Jimmy who’s been sold the same piece of licorice. Meeting a friend? Another 5 cents, please! But what is the cost of a friend? Aren’t they priceless? Is there a way all three kids can solve this puzzle? This imaginative, unpredictable, and action-filled story can be seamlessly integrated into math, humanities, and social-emotional learning curricula and is sure to be a favorite with those who love travel and adventure. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Math, travel, friendship, and ingenuity blend for a quirky, entertaining, and satisfying tale. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-18001-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
A straightforward, effective approach to helping children cope with one of life’s commonplace yet emotionally fraught...
A child struggles with the worry and anxiety that come with an unexpected problem.
In a wonderful balance of text and pictures, the team responsible for What Do You Do With an Idea (2014) returns with another book inspiring children to feel good about themselves. A child frets about a problem that won’t go away: “I wished it would just disappear. I tried everything I could to hide from it. I even found ways to disguise myself. But it still found me.” The spare, direct narrative is accompanied by soft gray illustrations in pencil and watercolor. The sepia-toned figure of the child is set apart from the background and surrounded by lots of white space, visually isolating the problem, which is depicted as a purple storm cloud looming overhead. Color is added bit by bit as the storm cloud grows and its color becomes more saturated. With a backpack and umbrella, the child tries to escape the problem while the storm swirls, awash with compass points scattered across the pages. The pages brighten into splashes of yellow as the child decides to tackle the problem head-on and finds that it holds promise for unlooked-for opportunity.
A straightforward, effective approach to helping children cope with one of life’s commonplace yet emotionally fraught situations, this belongs on the shelf alongside Molly Bang’s Sophie books. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-943-20000-9
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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