Crab is a cheerfully cheeky crustacean if a bit uninspiring.
A playful red crab teases his fellow brightly hued sea creatures in this color concept book.
A red crab “shock[s]” a blue fish, “surprise[s]” a green turtle, and encounters a yellow sea horse. Claw-shaped die cuts appear on each recto in ever decreasing sizes to provide a sensory experience for the youngest readers. This also has the effect of pinning the crab in claws-up position in every scene, with backgrounds and sea flora and fauna changing to provide some compositional variety, and his varied facial expressions also help to make up for this. Scientifically preferred terms, such as pink “sea jelly” (which smiles seraphically) and orange “sea star,” are included in the bland, unevenly scanning rhymed couplets that are meted out on each spread: “Green sea turtle cannot believe her eyes / when crab snap snaps—what a surprise!” The saucy crab finally gets his comeuppance when a gray shark appears on the scene, making the crab scuttle into hiding. The graphically clean imagery features a color palette that is appropriately watery, but the black, sans-serif type is virtually unreadable on a couple of the spreads, when it is set on a dark-blue background.
Crab is a cheerfully cheeky crustacean if a bit uninspiring. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68010-625-1
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver.
The farmyard's chickens experience Halloween.
A round, full moon shines in the sky, and the chickens of Boynton's barnyard are feeling “nervous.” Pumpkins shine “with flickering eyes,” witches and wizards wander the pastures, and one chicken has seen “a mouse of enormous size.” It’s Halloween night, and readers will delight as the chickens huddle together and try to figure out what's going on. All ends well, of course, and in Boynton's trademark silly style. (It’s really quite remarkable how her ranks of white, yellow-beaked chickens evoke rows of candy corn.) At this point parents and children know what they're in for when they pick up a book by the prolific author, and she doesn't disappoint here. The chickens are silly, the pigs are cute, and the coloring and illustrations evoke a warmth that little ones wary of Halloween will appreciate. For children leery of the ghouls and goblins lurking in the holiday's iconography, this is a perfect antidote, emphasizing all the fun Halloween has to offer.
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7611-9300-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
An upbeat early book on feelings with a simple storyline that little ones will respond to.
This simplified version of Diesen and Hanna’s The Pout-Pout Fish (2008) is appropriate for babies and toddlers.
Brief, rhyming text tells the story of a sullen fish cheered up with a kiss. A little pink sea creature pokes his head out of a hole in the sea bottom to give the gloomy fish some advice: “Smile, Mr. Fish! / You look so down // With your glum-glum face / And your pout-pout frown.” He explains that there’s no reason to be worried, scared, sad or mad and concludes: “How about a smooch? / And a cheer-up wish? // Now you look happy: / What a smile, Mr. Fish!” Simple and sweet, this tale offers the lesson that sometimes, all that’s needed for a turnaround in mood is some cheer and encouragement to change our perspective. The clean, uncluttered illustrations are kept simple, except for the pout-pout fish’s features, which are delightfully expressive. Little ones will easily recognize and likely try to copy the sad, scared and angry looks that cross the fish’s face.
An upbeat early book on feelings with a simple storyline that little ones will respond to. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-37084-8
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
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