by Nosy Crow ; illustrated by Ed Bryan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 22, 2016
Excellent design and illustrations successfully turn a popular storybook app into an appealing picture book.
Nosy Crow turns its outstanding Three Little Pigs fairy-tale app (2011) into a print book.
Bright, cartoon-style illustrations set a cheerful tone as the three little pigs set off to make their ways in the world, even though a mischievous wolf lurks in the background. The action moves briskly along, with each pig building a house and living happily until the wolf arrives. Most of the familiar elements are present, but no pigs get eaten in this version. After his house is destroyed, the first little pig runs “squealing to his sister’s house with the wolf racing after him.” Excellent design balances full-bleed illustrations with close-ups framed in plenty of negative space. Words printed in boldface and varied fonts encourage readers to add emphasis and emotion in just the right spots. In the end, the wolf runs howling down the road with a burned rear end: no wolf stew for these little pigs. The storybook app Cinderella (2011) receives similar treatment as a print book. Both lack the humorous speech bubbles from the apps, keeping the focus on the simplified stories. In Cinderella, this has the effect of taking away some of the pizzazz and nuances noted in the app, but the classic pig tale weathers the transition just fine.
Excellent design and illustrations successfully turn a popular storybook app into an appealing picture book. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8655-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
Hee haw.
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The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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