by Renée Treml ; illustrated by Renée Treml ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2013
Elegant, informative, engaging.
Count from one to 10 with some unusual avian creatures (and the titular mammal).
“1 very tired wombat” curls up to sleep in the middle of a left-hand page; a four-line verse describes this on the right-hand page, and two curlews poke their heads into view in the lower-left and upper-right corners. And so the book proceeds, counting “2 curious curlews,” then “3 furtive frogmouths…4 peaceful pigeons” and so on, all the way up to “10 flittering fairy wrens.” In between, there are magpies and galahs and penguins and budgerigars and kookaburras. Such a collection of birds inevitably wakes the wombat, whose enormous sneeze covers several pages and turns the book into a bird countdown from 10 to one. At the end of the day, the exhausted wombat settles back to sleep. An appendix entitled “About the Animals” explains, among other things, that all these birds and the wombat come from Australia. Teml’s verse is forgettable, but her illustrations place beautiful pen-and-ink drawings against delicate pastel washes and capture lots of personality in her creatures. The judicious use of color and white space makes each two-page spread a work of art as well as a visual delight.
Elegant, informative, engaging. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-74275-578-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random Australia/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
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by James Dean ; illustrated by James Dean ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 18, 2018
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010
Hee haw.
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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
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