Well executed.
A child and caregiver enjoy an outdoor fire while night creatures become active around them.
There are a tent and a campfire in a field dotted with trees, a pond in the foreground and a two-story house in the background. Dusk has just given way to night. A bat hangs upside down, and a family of raccoons pokes their heads out of the trunk of a tree. “Night bugs blink on” while other creatures creep in search of food, leap, crouch, prowl, watch, pounce, and snatch. Close-ups of the animals finding their food dominate the spreads, while the brown-skinned child and adult roast marshmallows and point at stars. As morning light appears with the robins and the deer, the human pair walk back toward the house while “night creatures return / to quiet dens / and dusky nooks.” The illustrations effectively represent the night world on the page, with shadow and muted colors that require readers to look closely and pay attention. The spare, lyrical text is rhythmic and soothing, just right for a bedtime story. Most of the animals are not named in the text, which allows space for guesswork and discussion before turning to the full spread of endmatter for more information about the night creatures.
Well executed. (notes) (Picture book. 3-9)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5415-8129-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on.
Sharpson offers so-fish-ticated readers a heads up about the true terror of the seas.
The title says it all. Our unseen narrator is just fine with other animals: mammals. Reptiles. Even birds. But fish? Don’t trust them! First off, the rules always seem to change with fish. Some live in fresh water; some reside in salt water. Some have gills, while others have lungs. You can never see what they’re up to, since they hang out underwater, and they’re always eating those poor, innocent crabs. Soon, the narrator introduces readers to Jeff, a vacant-eyed yellow fish—but don’t be fooled! Jeff’s “the craftiest fish of all.” All fish are, apparently, hellbent on world domination, the narrator warns. “DON’T TRUST FISH!” Finally, at the tail end, we get a sly glimpse of our unreliable narrator. Readers needn’t be ichthyologists to appreciate Sharpson’s meticulous comic timing. (“Ships always sink at sea. They never sink on land. Isn’t that strange?”) His delightful text, filled to the brim with jokes that read aloud brilliantly, pairs perfectly with Santat’s art, which shifts between extreme realism and goofy hilarity. He also fills the book with his own clever gags (such as an image of Gilligan’s Island’s S.S. Minnow going down and a bottle of sauce labeled “Surly Chik’n Srir’racha’r”).
A ribald and uproarious warning to those unschooled in fishy goings-on. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780593616673
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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