Gourmets of all things gross will sniff at this.
While Mom’s away, Dad and the kids will play.
Following reminders not to pick their noses or play ball in the house, hardly is Mom out the door before the narrator, his sister, and Dad pull out industrial quantities of green goo, shape it into a massive ball, break a vase (“ ‘She’ll kill us,’ Dad shrieked”) and—uh oh, there it goes out the window. “ ‘It’s heading to town,’ I yelled. ‘Quick, get your bikes.’ / But our slippery snot-rocket was leaving our sight.” Having picked up pets, underwear, and miscellaneous litter on its way, the giga-greenie reaches town, where Mom (of course) is waiting to swat it into outer space with a big stick. She gets a Booger Blaster medal, and all is forgiven. Young audiences might forgive Richtel’s cavalier attitude toward rhyme and regular metrics, but after a promisingly icky prefatory table of booger types, Wildish turns in a lackluster loogie that looks more like papier-mâché or a boulder-sized, oddly colored meatball than anything truly worth gagging at. And do readers really need yet another doofus dad? A “postman” and two other figures are brown-skinned in an otherwise all-white cast.
Gourmets of all things gross will sniff at this. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-234984-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
While simplistic, it’s a serviceable starter for discussions of spectrum disorders with younger neurotypical audiences.
Isaac explains why he wears a mask and cape and sometimes has special needs.
Packaged between rainbow-striped endpapers, this purposeful monologue offers a mix of positive takes—“I’ve got special superpowers that make me slightly different from my brother and the other kids at school”—and coping strategies. Among these latter are looking at foreheads rather than directly at eyes, which makes him “feel scared,” and keeping personal comments “inside my head so that I don’t upset people.” In the big, simple illustrations, Walsh gives Isaac uniformly smiling pets and peers for company, and she shows him less than cheerful only once, when the buzzing of fluorescent lights “makes my ears really hurt.” At the end he explains that he has Asperger’s, “which is a kind of autism,” and closes by affirming that his brother understands him, “and now you do too!” That may be overstating the case, but Isaac comes off as less inscrutable than the children in Gail Watts’ Kevin Thinks (2012) or Davene Fahy and Carol Inouye’s Anthony Best (2013). That the book is aimed not at children on the spectrum but at their peers is made explicit in a jacket-flap note from the author, whose son has Asperger’s.
While simplistic, it’s a serviceable starter for discussions of spectrum disorders with younger neurotypical audiences. (URL list) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8121-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Bathtub fun, warm father-daughter interaction, a bit of exposure to sea life…and opportunities aplenty for counting, too.
Young Leanne’s bathtime turns anything but boring once her father starts bringing in tub buddies from the sea.
Leanne’s continuing complaints that there’s nothing to play with send her father scampering outside to bring back one turtle, two eels, three clownfish, and so on. But by the time 10 “octopi” have been wedged in, it’s time to think outside the tub. So down to the shore go dad and daughter (both white): “The waves were wonderful. The sun was superb. The sand was sublime. Leanne said, ‘A sea bath is the most fun of all!’ ” Delisle renders both human and animal figures in her colorful, increasingly crowded cartoon scenes with reasonable accuracy (Leanne is bare, but she is artfully fig-leafed throughout) and great animation. Let carping critics complain about the hazards of bathing with sea urchins and live fish, not to mention the whole salt water–vs.-fresh situation—young viewers will see the animals enjoying themselves as much as Leanne and her father are, laugh at the octopus draped over the toilet reading “The Little Mermaid” and other visual jokes, and take pleasure in the whole silly, playful premise. And to quell any lingering worries, a final wordless scene shows the animals all scurrying back to the sea.
Bathtub fun, warm father-daughter interaction, a bit of exposure to sea life…and opportunities aplenty for counting, too. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-927485-92-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Pajama Press
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2016
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