A short, simple fairy tale, enlivened by a touch of eccentricity that isn’t reflected in its images.
In Roberts’ brief debut picture book, a boy in a colorless kingdom discovers music and laughter.
An inquisitive child named Twinkle Bones lives in the “dreary, dark, and sad” Bone Head Kingdom in the sky, where citizens are made of bone and never smile, and where “fun had not yet been invented.” He doesn’t know what the kingdom is missing, but he’s determined to find out and fix it. The answer comes easily in this conflict-free tale, crafted with descriptive word repetition for readers progressing to chapter books. Twinkle Bones wanders into a “dark, dreary, and gray forest,” where he finds a hollow stick and is surprised by the sound it makes when he blows in it. With it, he soon transforms the kingdom into a shining place of music, happiness, and laughter. The dancing citizens’ “clicking, clattering” bones spark and glitter, lighting up the sky with what we on Earth mistakenly assume to be twinkling stars. The eccentric idea of dancing bone people, although a tad macabre, gives this slight narrative a needed creative spark. This imaginative touch, however, doesn’t extend to the merely serviceable full-page illustrations, which depict humanlike characters with white skin and slightly zombielike faces.
A short, simple fairy tale, enlivened by a touch of eccentricity that isn’t reflected in its images.Pub Date: June 28, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 22
Publisher: LifeRichPublishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cookie-cutter predictability.
After all the daring escapes in the How To Catch… series, will the kids be able to catch Santa?
Oddly, previous installments saw the children trying (and failing) to catch an elf and a reindeer, but both are easily captured in this story. Santa, however, is slippery. Tempted but not fooled by poinsettias, a good book (attached to a slingshot armed with a teddy bear projectile), and, of course, milk and cookies, Santa foils every plan. The hero in a red suit has a job to do. Presents must be placed, and lists must be checked. He has no time for traps and foolery (except if you’re the elf, who falls for every one of them). Luckily, Santa helps the little rascal escape each time. Little is new here—the kids resort to similar snares found in previous works: netting, lures, and technological wonders such as the Santa Catcher 5000. Although the rhythm falters quite a bit (“How did we get out you ask? / It looked like we were done for. / Santa’s magic is very real, / and I cannot reveal more”), fans of the series may not mind. Santa and Christmas just might be enough to overcome the flaws. Santa and the elf are light-skinned, one of the children is brown-skinned, and the other presents as Asian. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Cookie-cutter predictability. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781728274270
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2023
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Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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