Cat delights in this toddler page-turner.
Cat keeps losing their hat to the whooshing wind.
Purcell’s pink-shorts–wearing Cat from Cat Goes Fast (2020) is back with a hat to match. When the wind picks up the hat and blows it away, Cat skateboards past animals, rocks, and trees in pursuit. The story demonstrates cause and effect, showing what happens when the goose flies away with the hat and the wind blows it. In addition, Cat and friends use their problem-solving and teamwork skills to keep the hat on Cat’s head. Purcell includes opportunities for readers to participate, inviting them to spot the missing hat, for example, and to predict what might happen next. The rhyming text works well, set in simply structured sentences. Cat’s little bird friend and the other animals talk in speech bubbles, offering sweet little asides that are not integral to the plot. The illustrations are simple and clean, with solid backgrounds of blue skies and green grass. Belying the pictures’ charming simplicity, the book moves: Three simple lines bent in various ways effectively convey the blowing wind, and because there is always something just about to happen with the turn of the page, the pacing keeps up. Cat is never referred to with gendered pronouns and generally appears androgynous.
Cat delights in this toddler page-turner. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-80036-006-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Tiny Seed
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.
One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.
It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Robin Corey/Random
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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
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