Another folksy take on the Biblical creation story from the publishers of Phyllis Root’s Big Momma Makes the World (2003, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury). Here, Wood casts Mr. and Mrs. God as cooks with clashing styles; having made a massive sun, Mr. God enthusiastically assembles roaring monsters to populate Mrs. God’s cool, smaller Earth. “They’re hideous,” she complains. “What were you thinking?” Mr. God obligingly blasts them out of existence, but then miffs Mrs. God again by creating a pelican (“Look at that beak!”) that scoops up her colorful, just-decanted rainbow of fish. Opening with an empyrean kitchen full of pots bobbing around an oven “big enough to roast a star,” and closing with two bare, decidedly Neanderthal-ish people rising up from a cookie sheet, Ering’s full-bleed, broadly brushed scenes feature a pair of gnomish elders floating in space amidst kitchenware and bowls of animal parts. Not exactly canonical, but a lighthearted way to get young readers thinking about creation through collaborative effort. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: April 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7636-1258-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
The Pumpkin Book (32 pp.; $16.95; Sept. 15; 0-8234-1465-5): From seed to vine and blossom to table, Gibbons traces the growth cycle of everyone’s favorite autumn symbol—the pumpkin. Meticulous drawings detail the transformation of tiny seeds to the colorful gourds that appear at roadside stands and stores in the fall. Directions for planting a pumpkin patch, carving a jack-o’-lantern, and drying the seeds give young gardeners the instructions they need to grow and enjoy their own golden globes. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1465-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999
Who is next in the ocean food chain? Pallotta has a surprising answer in this picture book glimpse of one curious boy. Danny, fascinated by plankton, takes his dory and rows out into the ocean, where he sees shrimp eating those plankton, fish sand eels eating shrimp, mackerel eating fish sand eels, bluefish chasing mackerel, tuna after bluefish, and killer whales after tuna. When an enormous humpbacked whale arrives on the scene, Danny’s dory tips over and he has to swim for a large rock or become—he worries’someone’s lunch. Surreal acrylic illustrations in vivid blues and red extend the story of a small boy, a small boat, and a vast ocean, in which the laws of the food chain are paramount. That the boy has been bathtub-bound during this entire imaginative foray doesn’t diminish the suspense, and the facts Pallotta presents are solidly researched. A charming fish tale about the one—the boy—that got away. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-88106-075-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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