A fun and useful educational tool for preschoolers, particularly beginning readers. (Board book. 4-6)
There’s so much to see on the airport train.
One of the passengers on the airport train has lost her ticket! In this lift-the-flap concertina book, readers travel from car to car of the aforementioned train, searching for both the missing ticket and for other objects hidden within the pictures. Each illustration requires a different preschool skill, including recognizing shapes, counting, and matching. The images feature diverse humans and quirky creatures, not to mention skillfully drawn, child-friendly objects such as instruments and balls. The clean design separates the text from the illustrations, which are busy and teeming with life. Once they have completed the activities within the train cars, readers can flip to the backs of the pages to see what passengers are viewing out of the windows and to do more counting and identification. The pages of the book pull out into a full train, and it lacks any kind of narrative throughline, making it unwieldy for group read-alouds. It is, however, a wonderful option for one-on-one learning sessions and for children who are independent enough to manipulate the pages on their own—although it should be noted that the design, while clever, can be confusing and, at times, frustrating for the youngest readers.
A fun and useful educational tool for preschoolers, particularly beginning readers. (Board book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3678-0
Page Count: 10
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Required reading for both plane-iacs and any first-time flier.
For young fans of things with wings, another oversized visual riot from the creator of Everything Goes: On Land (2011).
Following a departing family as it wends its way through a teeming airport, Biggs doesn’t just confine himself to winged aircraft—covering instead the entire history of flight from the Wright Brothers on. Topical spreads are filled edge to edge with early airplanes, modern working planes of various designs, helicopters, gliders, blimps and balloons. Knowing just how much visual busyness to pack into each bright cartoon scene without turning it into a confusing jumble, he also offers alternate spreads a-bustle with activity. Passengers wheel luggage through a concourse, undress to various degrees at a security station (“NOPE” flashes the red sign over the gate as a peg-legged pirate tries to pass), board a jetliner (later seen in a cutaway view) and taxi out to the runway for a climactic double-gatefold takeoff. Along with identifying labels, viewers inclined to take closer looks will be rewarded by the sight of five rug rats leading a harried mom on a merry chase, birds with or without jaunty hats, at least one personal cameo of the artist and other diversions.
Required reading for both plane-iacs and any first-time flier. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-195810-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An early-reader book to build on.
An accessible, rhyming text drives this story-with-a-twist about a construction site, inviting new readers to hone their emerging skills.
Initial spreads depict a variety of vehicles engaged in digging, scooping, lifting and so on, detailing the activities of a construction site. Varied visual perspectives in the art draw the eyes to the different machines, but they can be disorienting—particularly in the worm’s-eye view on the spread reading “Digger’s teeth bite the ground,” which does not show the “[t]racks skid[ding] around” as indicated by the text. On the other hand, while some readers may wonder why the vehicles’ operators are not seen in the art, this omission is satisfyingly resolved in a long-shot spread that depicts a group of children playing with toy trucks in a sand pile. The vehicles are clearly miniversions of those from prior pages, and it’s refreshing to see both boys and girls and at least one child of color included in the group “working like a team.” From here, the narrative draws the children’s play to a conclusion by book’s end, providing readers with a fictive parallel to their own accomplishments in finishing the book: “Good work, crew!”
An early-reader book to build on. (Early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: June 25, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-375-96910-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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