It’s docile and harmless, but there are already better barnyard-themed books available to choose.
In rhyming verse, explore a farm alongside an enthusiastic toddler.
This tame board book features a toddler and their (extremely youthful) mother admiring scarecrows, playing with ducklings, and spotting various animals and machinery about the farmyard. Books about a day on the farm are an oft-repeated theme for the board-book crew, and there’s no new ground broken here. Digitally rendered, the loose-lined humans and animals have a breezy, caricaturelike style, but they aren’t imbued with much charm. Stick-figure animals populate the backgrounds, and even animals like baby lambs that should be objectively adorable instead resemble shapeless scribbles. While there are scattered perky pages with contrast and color—a page of bright red apples opposite another of golden honey—a vanilla palette of listless, desaturated colors daubed in patches against stark white pages dominates, making this one bland barnyard. Its narrative has an equally dull sound. Ho-hum rhyming reports what mom and baby spot in an overly singsong rhythm that doesn’t flow effortlessly when read aloud: “You see corn in a row / I see a big scarecrow.” Mom and toddler both present white.
It’s docile and harmless, but there are already better barnyard-themed books available to choose. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-1447-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday.
Animal parents declare their love for their offspring in alphabetical order.
Each page displays an enormous capital letter, one line of verse with the keyword capitalized, and a loving nonhuman parent gazing adoringly at their baby. “A is for Always. I always love you more. / B is for Butterfly kisses. It’s you that I adore.” While not named or labelled as such, the A is also for an alligator and its hatchling and B is for a butterfly and a butterfly child (not a caterpillar—biology is not the aim of this title) interacting in some way with the said letter. For E there are an elephant and a calf; U features a unicorn and foal; and X, keyed to the last letter of the animal’s name, corresponds to a fox and three pups. The final double-page spread shows all the featured creatures and their babies as the last line declares: “Baby, I love you from A to Z!” The verse is standard fare and appropriately sentimental. The art is cartoony-cute and populated by suitably loving critters on solid backgrounds. Hearts accent each scene, but the theme of the project is never in any doubt.
Perfect for Valentine’s Day, but the syrupy sweetness will cloy after the holiday. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7282-2095-6
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As with many holiday gifts, the sparkly packaging may interest toddlers more than what’s inside.
Readers can count down eight of Santa's reindeer as they jump up and out of the scene.
In each one of the mostly double-page spreads, one reindeer, from Dasher to Blitzen, plays a central role in a winter activity (sledding, ski jumping, ice skating—and soccer and yoga?) that launches the creature into the air. Glitter-speckled tabs, each with small portraits of a member of Santa's herd, appear at either the top or the right side of each page, which little fingers will enjoy flipping. In what looks to be pencil-and-watercolor cartoons, Rogers uses different facial expressions, as well as collars, bows or other accessories, to distinguish the reindeer from one another. Donner (not Donder) and Blitzen are squeezed together on the penultimate spread, likely to keep the page count down. The verse mostly scans, but the rhyme scheme has become the cliché of counting books: "Eight jolly reindeer / stretching up to heaven. / Up goes Dasher / and then there are... // Seven...." Santa, his iconic sleigh and the eight reindeer in flight make a dramatic and required appearance on the book's final double-page spread.
As with many holiday gifts, the sparkly packaging may interest toddlers more than what’s inside. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-65145-5
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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