Basic math is inescapable, even at dinner parties with the lion king. At this royal meal, the elephant takes half the cake before passing it along, the hippo takes half of that, and so on. When the cake finally reaches the ant, she struggles to cut the tiny remaining slice in two—one for her, one for the king—but it just crumbles to pieces. Mortified, she vows to bake the king a strawberry sponge cake. The other, ruder, animals, not to be outdone, each double the ant’s offering… crescendoing to the elephant’s hard-to-swallow pledge of 256 peanut-butter pound cakes. In addition to witnessing the occasional price of boorishness, young readers will easily grasp how fast things disappear when repeatedly halved, and how quickly numbers add up when doubled. A divided-up cake on the endpapers illustrates fractions from one to 1/128, and the o’er-hasty cake-doublings are displayed in countable cake form, from one to 256. The handsome watercolor-and-ink illustrations are as gently funny as the story, and the heavily partitioned design well suits the math lesson at hand. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8027-9768-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Walker
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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