This sweet and simple offering is ideal for sharing one-on-one or for featuring with a small audience in a program...
This volume in the Simply Small board-book series introduces Emma, a little hedgehog with a heart of gold.
Emma and her three sisters exhaust themselves trudging along after Daddy up a steep hill. Inspired by the sweet scent in the air, Emma picks flowers and hands one to each of her three wilting sisters. They each give her a kiss in return, as does her proud father, and that makes: “Three flowers, / four kisses, and / five hedgehogs / —happy at home.” This final spread shows the five critters resting all cuddled together in a contented clump, with Emma’s sisters still holding onto their precious flowers. The simple, uncluttered illustrations complement the sparse but apt text. The only things pictured are the hedgehogs, the hill and the flowers, all of which are drawn with very thick, bold outlines. The sky is rendered a soft pink, the hill a light green and the hedgehogs shades of tan, with the blue, white and yellow flowers adding a bit of variety to the palette.
This sweet and simple offering is ideal for sharing one-on-one or for featuring with a small audience in a program celebrating family or, even better, small acts of kindness and love. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-897476-93-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Simply Read
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
Twenty times per spread is too much brand trumpeting for, well, anyone; still, this will sell as a baby-shower gift for...
A bright, cheerful illustration of the reason why picture books shouldn’t be product-placement vehicles.
Although the back lists the illustrator credit in miniscule font, the front cover and spine credit only “PANTONE®” as creator of this concept piece. PANTONE® is a company that offers a trademarked system of standardized colors—a method of specifying and matching colors from afar. Here, each right-hand page features a cartoony object in a single hue, while the facing left-hand page has a 20-square grid of variations on that hue. Assets are the vibrant visual energy throughout and an emphasis on hue variations that can be detected in the facing illustration. But every variation broadcasts a name and identity number—and the brand, lest readers forget. Some names are cutesy (“Pink Lemonade Pink: PANTONE 210”), others meaningless as color identifiers (“Apron Blue: PANTONE 314”; “Mitten Purple: PANTONE 259”). Readers old enough to comprehend the PANTONE concept will have long outgrown this toddler-friendly art; worse, when they read the disclaimer that “PANTONE Colors may not match PANTONE-identified standards. Consult current PANTONE Color Publications for accurate color,” they’ll be disgusted that a color standardization company is betraying its own raison d’être.
Twenty times per spread is too much brand trumpeting for, well, anyone; still, this will sell as a baby-shower gift for expectant graphic designers. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: March 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0180-1
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sentimental and derivative.
A baby llama queries other animals in search of mama.
A woolly cria asks a cow, a pig, a cat, and a horse the same question: “Are you my mama?” Each animal responds in the negative with a rhymed retort: “No, I’m a pig. That’s my gig!” The smiling baby llama always appears on recto with eyes closed so it’s beneath two plush llama ears securely attached to the top of the back cover. This gimmick is the only new feature in the overplayed baby-llama–and-mama genre, and only the very youngest listeners will be surprised when the cria finds its mama and she declares her love for the baby. The companion title, the slightly more engaging and original I Love You Little Monster! also embeds plush elements into the back cover, but this time it is monster horns. On each right-hand page, a different monster with the same green horns appears. The theme here is the hoary one of unconditional love, as the unseen first-person narrator proclaims that love will be bestowed even if the monster in question gets angry, jumps in mud puddles, or causes bathtub floods. Magsamen’s signature look of faux stitch-work and brightly colored lettering is at play in both the images and on key words in the text. Hearts are sprinkled throughout the sunny art.
Sentimental and derivative. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-62917-0
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
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