Surreally unsatisfying.
The trip to Grandma's house goes through many remarkable places.
A light-skinned child with short dark hair, surrounded by scattered toys and pictures and crayons, hardly seems ready when Mom announces that it's time to go. They're barely out of the neighborhood before the first "Are we there yet?" And that question is repeated over and over as they drive their little red car on a highway filled with various vehicles, across a long suspension bridge, and through farm country and then a desert. Even these ordinary settings have weird touches in McCauley’s vivid, posterlike double-page spreads: there’s a worm riding in a giant paper airplane near the bridge; a minotaur stands in the farm’s field; and a T. Rex looms in the desert. The locations grow quirkier, going underwater and even into outer space, where a young three-eyed extraterrestrial in a flying saucer echoes, “Are we there yet?” Finally at Grandma's house (which is surrounded by topiaries of many of the figures seen along the way), the child astonishingly pronounces the journey: "Boring." McCauley's mixed-media illustrations are bright and slyly amusing; readers will thrill at picking out the peculiar details, most of which have their roots in the child’s toys scattered at the beginning. Was the duo’s anything-but-boring journey all in the child’s head? Regardless, the cynical punch line seems to undercut what appeared to be a celebration of the boundless imagination.
Surreally unsatisfying. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-3155-9
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Should appeal to all the little grump trucks hauling their feelings about.
When dump trucks get angry (really, really angry), head for the hills!
Little Dump Truck is “the happiest member of the construction crew.” Assisting everyone from Excavator to Bulldozer, she hauls her load merrily. But sometimes things just don’t go her way. In rapid succession, dirt is blown in her face, a tire is punctured, and a flock of birds mistake her for a lavatory. Now she’s Little Grump Truck, and the exceedingly poor advice from her co-workers (“Ignore it. You’ll be fine”; “Shake it off!”) pushes her too far. After Little Grump Truck unloads (figuratively and literally) on her colleagues, everyone else has the “grumpies” too. It isn’t until she closes her eyes and focuses that Little Dump Truck is able to clear her mind and lighten her mood. Apologies are in order, and soon everything is humming (for the time being, anyway). Though the narrative doesn’t drill the message home, both child and adult readers alike will hopefully pick up on the fact that pithy aphorisms are maddeningly unhelpful when one is in a bad mood. Gray skies accompany the dump truck’s mood, which is depicted as an ever morphing agglomeration of hard, black scribbles. The accompanying art serves its purpose, investing its trucks with personality via time-honored headlight, windshield-wiper, and grille facial features. Little Dump Truck has a purple cab and green bed and a single lash on each headlight eye. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Should appeal to all the little grump trucks hauling their feelings about. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30081-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Traffic jams, it turns out, can be good fun, and children might even learn a word or two.
A genial elementary reader that taps into the electricity generated by Brian Biggs’ Everything Goes: On Land (2011).
This book has been designed to share with very beginning readers, as Bourne’s text amply illustrates in its simple repetitions: “ ‘Woof, woof, woof.’…The dog wags his tail. The dog does not want to stop. The dog wants to see.” Then there is the truck honking—“Honk, honk, honk!”—at the tree that has fallen across the road, causing the traffic jam that is the story’s pivot. Though the text can feel overly purpose-driven, and the words more to be absorbed than befriended, such is not the case with Abbott’s artwork—“in the style of Brian Biggs,”according to the title page—which is amiability itself. The line work is crayon bold, and the color so saturated it is thick as fudge. But there is something else lurking in the illustrations, something Claymation-tangible, which may arouse the urge to bring them home and introduce them to mother. If one of the objects of an early-early reader is to keep the reader focused, this artwork immeasurably helps.
Traffic jams, it turns out, can be good fun, and children might even learn a word or two. (Early reader. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-195819-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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