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BUDDY AND EARL AND THE GREAT BIG BABY

Name: BUDDY AND EARL AND THE GREAT BIG BABY
Author: Maureen Fergus
ISBN: 978-1-55498-716-0

From the Buddy and Earl series

by Maureen Fergus ; illustrated by Carey Sookocheff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 9, 2016

Earl concludes that babies and dogs have something in common...they both make the world a happier place. Of course.

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Buddy and Earl—dog and hedgehog, respectively—experience life’s most peculiar phenomenon: a baby.

Buddy and Earl engage in a child’s-eye-level Q-and-A when they hear that Mrs. Cunningham is coming for a visit and bringing her “adorable” baby. “So! What’s a baby?” Earl asks. Do you drive it around, plug it in, eat it? Buddy explains: no, no, no. They are small, eat things off the floor, and sometimes smell very interesting. The baby arrives—it’s the kind that already walks—and proceeds to commit quiet mayhem, going so far as to play with (eat, really) Buddy’s and Earl’s toys and food before being put down for a nap. “I’m glad she put you in your cage,” notes Earl. The baby breaks out and toddles off. Earl is beside himself. Maybe the baby will encounter poisonous snakes or bubbling lava or stampeding dinosaurs. Buddy and Earl find the baby safely washing stuff in the toilet bowl—whew! This story tickles the funny bone raw, and Sookocheff’s bare-bones linework and minimal palette keep events immediate. Fergus throws in just enough wry commentary to make readers think and a few vocabulary ringers to really keep them on their feet: “foreboding,” “gummy” (as in gums, not Wrigley’s). The humans are all white, except when the baby’s face turns a deep, tomato red.

Earl concludes that babies and dogs have something in common...they both make the world a happier place. Of course. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-55498-716-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Groundwood

Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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PRINCESS PRU AND THE SWITCHEROO
by Maureen Fergus ; illustrated by Danesh Mohiuddin

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ZANDER STAYS
by Maureen Fergus ; illustrated by Scot Ritchie

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PRINCESS PRU AND THE OGRE ON THE HILL
by Maureen Fergus ; illustrated by Danesh Mohiuddin

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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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. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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LOVE FROM THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015

Safe to creep on by.

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Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.

In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.

Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)