New readers need lots of choices, and this series promises to fill a niche for them. Keep flapping, Eva! (Fantasy. 5-8)
Eva the owl chronicles 11 days in her life in the first in the Owl Diaries series for emerging readers.
Eva has received a new diary and uses it to record the details of her life, along with sunny drawings and photographs that make her diary more like a scrapbook. In between daily entries, she comes up with the idea of having a big festival at her school. Her teacher, Mrs. Featherbottom, thinks it’s a great idea but warns Eva to share the work with her classmates—which readers might already have inferred will be a challenge. When her rival, Sue Clawson, offers help, Eva stubbornly takes on most of the responsibilities herself. Bright and colorful digital illustrations, large type, frequent speech bubbles and a familiar story make this accessible to emerging readers. The 11 chapters and substantial number of pages will help these readers feel accomplished. Some of the wordplay (“owlementary,” “Winglish”) and invented owlspeak (“flaperrific,” “flap-tastic”) might trip up the intended audience, but they also make the story memorable. It’s hard not to think that if Eva spent more time getting ready for the festival and less time writing in her diary, she might not end up in the weeds—but then there would be no story, of course.
New readers need lots of choices, and this series promises to fill a niche for them. Keep flapping, Eva! (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-68363-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Branches/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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 first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity.
Buzz and his buzzy buddy open a spinoff series of nonfiction early readers with an aquarium visit.
Buzz: “Like other fish, sharks breathe through gills.” Fly Guy: “GILLZZ.” Thus do the two pop-eyed cartoon tour guides squire readers past a plethora of cramped but carefully labeled color photos depicting dozens of kinds of sharks in watery settings, along with close-ups of skin, teeth and other anatomical features. In the bite-sized blocks of narrative text, challenging vocabulary words like “carnivores” and “luminescence” come with pronunciation guides and lucid in-context definitions. Despite all the flashes of dentifrice and references to prey and smelling blood in the water, there is no actual gore or chowing down on display. Sharks are “so cool!” proclaims Buzz at last, striding out of the gift shop. “I can’t wait for our next field trip!” (That will be Fly Guy Presents: Space, scheduled for September 2013.)
A first-rate sharkfest, unusually nutritious for all its brevity. (Informational easy reader. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-50771-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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