Wildness is part and parcel of everyday childhood, embraced here with a roar.
This playful poem of a picture book captures a child’s wildness and warmth as he pretends to be a tiger.
From the moment he wakes up and roars for his breakfast, his tiger alter ego gives him permission to safely test the boundaries of family life. Whether growling for food, upsetting his father’s coffee cup, or cuddling with his parents, the tiger-child dances in hairy spatters across the page. The book’s dynamic, often busy illustrations and shadowy, hinted-at junglescapes communicate myriad rapidly changing childhood feelings and identities. While preschoolers will appreciate the wily tiger-child protagonist, the story’s poetic text might be a challenge for the younger range of the audience, as the unusual word choices, punctuation, and sentence structure in this translation from German are more sophisticated than typical American texts for this age group. However, child readers (and certainly adult caregivers) will identify with the book’s central messages: Children can experience a wide swath of feelings, everyone makes mistakes, and everyone has complicated ways of interacting with the world. This little tiger is by turns loud, fast, greedy, clumsy, wild, wary, clever, creative, grumpy, quiet, and loving. The final quiet pages offer a peaceful conclusion to the wild narrative ride, creating a soothing finish for younger children who might be both thrilled and perhaps alarmed at the antics and naughtiness of the tiger-boy.
Wildness is part and parcel of everyday childhood, embraced here with a roar. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4456-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Crossing Kids
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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