Quantity alone qualifies this as compulsive and repeated reading, but there’s a delightfully mirthful creativity at work as...
Close your eyes and dream yourself into whatever you’d like to be!
A possibly Asian boy, a Caucasian girl and a bright white mouse challenge readers on the title page: “Take a look inside this book, and decide what you’d like to be.” Each two-page spread is a riot of bright pictures triggered by a single suggestion. “Can you imagine being BIG?” shows the boy towering over an airplane and making a big swimming pool look like a bathtub, while the girl blows on the lava coming out of a volcano and holds an elephant like it’s a stuffed toy. “Would you like to travel through time?” takes them—and readers—to the 1960s, the time of the Vikings, ancient Egypt and many other elsewheres. “Imagine being an animal, living in the wild” offers a total of 50 options, each in a square portrait. “Imagine flying in the sky, or living in the sea” horizontally divides the two pages, each half ridiculously crowded (in the sky: dirigible, fairy, superhero, helicopter, winged pig and more; in the sea: Neptune, manatee, tortoise, treasure, mermaid, etc.). Even the inside cover is loaded with suggestions, in the form of gerunds: “growing, flying, sleeping, sneezing...” all the way to “dreaming”—nearly 150 in all.
Quantity alone qualifies this as compulsive and repeated reading, but there’s a delightfully mirthful creativity at work as well. Good fun for a broad range of ages. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61067-343-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kane Miller
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A charming tale of an athlete who may not steal any bases but who will certainly steal readers’ hearts.
Ohtani, pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, teams up with Blank and Liem to tell the story of how his dog, Decoy, threw out a ceremonial first pitch.
It’s a big day! Decoy leaps “off the bed. Then back onto the bed. Then off the bed.” The enthusiastic pup heads outside to practice with his lucky baseball but is quickly distracted by squirrels (“we’ll play later!”), airplanes (“flyin’ high!”), and flowers (“smell ya soon!”). Dog and pitcher then head to the ballpark. In the locker room, Decoy high-paws Shohei’s teammates. It’s nearly time! But as Shohei prepares to warm up, Decoy realizes that he’s forgotten something important: his lucky ball. Without it, there will be “no championships, no parades, and no hot dogs!” Back home he goes, returning just in time. With Shohei at the plate, Decoy runs from the mound to his owner, rolling the ball into Shohei’s mitt for a “Striiiiike!” Related from a dog’s point of view, Ohtani and Blank’s energetic text lends the tale a sense of urgency and suspense. Liem’s illustrations capture the excitement of the first day of baseball season and the joys of locker room camaraderie, as well as Shohei and Decoy’s mutual affection—even when the ball is drenched in slobber, Shohei’s love for his pet shines through, and clearly, Decoy is focused when it matters.
A charming tale of an athlete who may not steal any bases but who will certainly steal readers’ hearts. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9780063460775
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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