Humpty Dumpty ($12.99; Oct. 1996; 10 pp.; 0-525-67540-X): Here's one version of this verse where the egg hero doesn't end up scrambled! Bold, three-dimensional pop-ups are big, clear, and solidly engineered, to survive a fair amount of toddler use and abuse. The familiar story and the paper mechanics flow easily, so that children who know the lines by heart will find themselves ``reading'' and turning pages at exactly the right moment. While there's a scant number of pages, all are loaded with details: castle turrets, toys, soldiers, royalty, and the beaming eggman himself. Readers will linger over each tableau on the page as if it were a landscape. (Pop-up. 2-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-67540-X
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A sweet, unassuming tale for adult and child to share.
A simple story about art and ingenuity unfolds through sparse text and clever illustrations.
A little Caucasian boy is creating a picture of a face out of pebbles. He has red ones for the hair and black for the eyes. Green would be perfect for the teeth, but he has no green ones, so it’s time to go “pebbling”! The boy and his mother set out with a picnic basket and pebbling gear. They find road pebbles and river pebbles for skipping, round pebbles and smooth ones. They spend a long, blissful day pebbling, but they return with no green pebbles. Suddenly, inspiration strikes, and the boy takes matters into his own hands, painting some pebbles green and using them to add the finishing touch to his picture. Aside from visually carrying the story, the illustrations depict lots of love between mother and son and add a bit of fun by incorporating objects made of pebbles, such as a truck, a fish, a sun and a moon. With a very similar style and feel, companion A Button Story features a little girl (also Caucasian) who must choose a new button to replace the lost one on her coat in order to go out and play with her father.
A sweet, unassuming tale for adult and child to share. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-55451-654-4
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Annick Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
While this title is a strong choice for learning about shapes, there are better options for opposites than its companion
Various animals take turns leading readers in a game of finding shapes that match.
Bright, bold images of animals accompany rhyming couplets. For example: “Dolphin dives into the sea / and spots a spinning star. / Now try to find another one. / Look closely. It’s not far!” The illustrations feature a dolphin and starfish on the left and an assortment of sea creatures with different shapes for the bodies, including a die-cut star, on the right. These cutouts neatly serve to reinforce the concepts being presented. The “Peek-through” device is not nearly so successful in companion title Tall and Short, which illustrates some basic opposites such as big/small, fast/slow and hot/cold: “Giraffe is tall,” and “Dog is short,” for example, or “Elephants are trumpeting: young and old.” The images are appealing, and they successfully convey the concepts presented. However, here the die cuts are a distraction at best and confusing at worst, since the cutouts are apparently arbitrary shapes and colors, entirely unrelated to the concepts presented.
While this title is a strong choice for learning about shapes, there are better options for opposites than its companion . (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-58925-566-6
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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