An invigorating wade into a range of useful skills, though the settings aren’t as carefully crafted as the instructional...
Linked mazes lead young questors past math, measurement, and map-reading challenges to an undersea castle.
A-bustle with automobiles for all that it’s supposed to be under water, the tangled roadways leading through Merp Town aren’t hard to navigate. But along with detours required by such obstacles as a giant octopus or Snozzles the sea dragon, travelers are frequently required to hold up a certain number of fingers, use the coordinates at the edges to locate hidden items, count cars of a certain color, or collect small pearls or other tokens before proceeding. The 12th maze leads to one final challenge: a cutaway castle with a top that can be reached only by climbing the tallest visible ladder, shimmying up the longest of a set of ropes, and like tasks. In Boston’s cartoon illustrations, tiny fish and other sea creatures are interspersed with green- or yellow-skinned merpeople in dress that seems better suited to dry land than undersea. That gesture toward diversity is not repeated in the co-published In the Jungle, in which sets of similar exercises in counting and finding are hosted by hut-dwelling native residents called Leafies, who are all green and sport dreadlocks and leopard-skin garments.
An invigorating wade into a range of useful skills, though the settings aren’t as carefully crafted as the instructional elements. (suggested activities) (Instructional picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68297-034-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: QEB Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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