developed by The Melody Book ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 13, 2012
A winning app that could easily be deemed the jazz version of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Smooth.
This highly user-friendly primer gives kids both a macro and micro lesson about jazz music.
Papa kitty wakes up his children with the exciting news that they’re going to visit a jazz band. After a yummy breakfast, off they go. First, they encounter a hip raccoon who plays a mean bass. Brother and sister cat also observe a fox playing drums, a goose tickling the ivories and a squirrel playing a groovy guitar riff. The story explores a wide variety of instruments, including the vibraphone, trumpets, trombones, three different saxophones, the flute and the clarinet. Turning the page activates instrument demos, though some launch more quickly than others. Touching band members elicits repeated demo performances, and if tapped all at once, they play at the same time. The young felines offer commentary when tapped, and the text itself provides helpful insight into the basic theory of jazz and the various categories of instruments that comprise a jazz band (brass and rhythm sections, for example). One page even highlights various sections as they chime in. The clever bonus games prompt kids to guess which instrument is making which sound, and it also quizzes them by asking them to match the names to the instruments.
A winning app that could easily be deemed the jazz version of The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. Smooth. (iPad storybook app. 2-8)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: The Melody Book
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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developed by The Melody Book
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry
BOOK REVIEW
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph
BOOK REVIEW
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph
by Loren Long & illustrated by Loren Long ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2009
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
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by Loren Long ; illustrated by Loren Long
by Loren Long ; illustrated by Loren Long
by Loren Long ; illustrated by Loren Long
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by Jason June ; illustrated by Loren Long
BOOK REVIEW
by Amanda Gorman ; illustrated by Loren Long
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by Lisa Wheeler ; illustrated by Loren Long
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