There is no shortage of picture books featuring geometric shapes, but surely this is one of the brightest. Grover (Amazing and Incredible Counting Stories, 1995, etc.) mimics children's art in his use of simple shapes and naive perspective, but composition and the balance of the intense colors are sophisticated. The book begins with circles—tires—on cars, then on trucks, and then as part of an interlacing jumble of ``tires and cars and trucks and roads.'' Squares are shown first as windows, then buildings are added, with roads between. Circles and squares are combined as boxes are loaded on trucks and smokestacks are added to buildings; boats appear, and finally all the elements seen on earlier pages come together in a busy panorama. An eye-catching elementary introduction to the notion, also found in Dayle Ann Dodds's The Shape of Things (1994, not reviewed), that these basic shapes can be found everywhere. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-200091-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Moonlight’s a night-loving, night-prowling cat, but Halloween night’s her special favorite. She revels in the smiling pumpkins, “straw laps” of neighborhood scarecrows, and costumed children that make Halloween so unique. A carelessly dropped piece of candy doesn’t hurt either, and under Halloween moonlight, Moonlight the cat joyously laps it up. Yet another, though not especially memorable, addition to the Halloween canon, Rylant’s very simple text makes a good holiday read-aloud for the very young. Sweet’s illustrations, mostly double-paged in acrylic and colored-pencil are rich and bold and have loads of child appeal. Surely some will take this as an example of looking differently at the deep darkness of night and all its splendors. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-029711-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003
Very simple, Byron Barton–like art featuring a dozen mites with engagingly oversized, googly eyes overcomes iffy rhyming—and even iffier biology—to offer a deceptively sophisticated sequence of math and design concepts. It begins and ends with a “bug”—actually a caterpillar—who provides the supporting base for various combinations of creatures—from a spider and a pair of snails to worms, bees, and finally a tiny flea, all of whom arrive or depart piecemeal, perch together in various acrobatic architectures, then finally disperse after the inevitable collapse: “Look out—they’re falling! / The poor little things! / They all should go home / Before bedtime begins.” Verbal pratfalls aside, this makes a playful way to take that first, challenging step past simple addition, offering plenty of practice in both counting and pattern recognition. (Picture book. 3-4)
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2005
ISBN: 1-894965-12-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simply Read
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
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