A little girl's anxieties about her mother's return when she's left for a few hours with her wise, empathetic ``Aunt Whistle'' are obliquely expressed in her concern for her dog Dooley when he disappears after a rabbit: ``What if he doesn't come back?...Suppose he gets lost? Suppose he forgets about us and never comes back at all!'' Aunt Whistle assures the young narrator that ``If need be, I can whistle up Dooley''; and after they finish picking apples, she does. So why not whistle up Mama? Because she'll ``come back all by herself.'' A nicely understated exploration of a common fear, as reassuring as the hugs this child gets, at all the right times, from both mother and aunt. Cannon's wonderfully expressive paintings, in bold swatches of richly saturated colors delineated with broad lines of subtler tones, capture the girl's mood and her essential security. Nice. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-531-05490-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Actor and author Witherspoon makes her picture-book debut.
Betty, a light-skinned, bespectacled child with blond pigtails, was born busy. Constantly in motion, Betty builds big block towers, cartwheels around the house (underfoot, of course), and plays with the family’s “fantabulous” dog, Frank, who is stinky and dirty. That leads to a big, busy, bright idea that, predictably, caroms toward calamity yet drags along enough hilarity to be entertaining. With a little help from best friend Mae (light-skinned with dark hair), the catastrophe turns into a lucrative dog-washing business. Busy Betty is once again ready to rush off to the next big thing. Yan uses vivid, pastel colors for a spread of a group of diverse kids bringing their dogs to be washed, helping out, and having fun, while the grown-ups are muted and relegated to the background. Extreme angles in several of the illustrations effectively convey a sense of perpetual motion and heighten the story’s tension, drawing readers in. An especially effective, glitter-strewn spread portrays Frank looming large and seemingly running off the page while Betty looks on, stricken at the ensuing mess. Though it’s a familiar and easily resolved story, Witherspoon’s rollicking text never holds back, replete with amusing phrases such as “sweet cinnamon biscuits,” “bouncing biscuits,” and “busted biscuits.” As Betty says, “Being busy is a great way to be.” Young readers are sure to agree. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An entertaining, if light, addition to the growing shelf of celebrity-authored picture books. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46588-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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