An alphabetic array of animals dressed in spiffy, sparkly human attire gathers every year in the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool for a dancing competition: affluent alpacas, bears in bright boleros, camels who conga, all the way to wolves and wolverines who do the Watusi and beyond. A few creatures are unexpected: N is for numbats, U is for ugwumps (“We have just invented these”) and X is for oxen who foxtrot. The bordered watercolor-and-gouache illustrations flounce and swirl, busily filling the pages in a style reminiscent of Graeme Base but with less crisp definition. Written in verse, often alliterative, the conceit works, but the “I Spy” facet does not. At the end, the judges declare everyone winners, but the band can’t play the grand finale because the monkeys have hidden all 26 instruments. The hidden objects are quite difficult to find, and frustrated readers may end up resorting to the upside-down key in the back and flipping to the endpapers, where all 26 are clearly depicted. At least two will be unfamiliar to kids: a guiro and a contrabassoon. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8109-8842-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
Rylant (Henry and Mudge and the Sneaky Crackers, 1998, etc.) slips into a sentimental mode for this latest outing of the boy and his dog, as she sends Mudge and Henry and his parents off on a camping trip. Each character is attended to, each personality sketched in a few brief words: Henry's mother is the camping veteran with outdoor savvy; Henry's father doesn't know a tent stake from a marshmallow fork, but he's got a guitar for campfire entertainment; and the principals are their usual ready-for-fun selves. There are sappy moments, e.g., after an evening of star- gazing, Rylant sends the family off to bed with: ``Everyone slept safe and sound and there were no bears, no scares. Just the clean smell of trees . . . and wonderful green dreams.'' With its nice tempo, the story is as toasty as its campfire and swaddled in Stevenson's trusty artwork. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81175-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1998
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