Accept a slight current of illogic and enjoy this tale’s accomplished visuals and percussive rhymes.
A shark rhymes its perspective on the two human researchers who catch, tag, and release it from a “strange beast”—their boat.
“It stole me from the ocean, / and took me to the sky.” Hooked by a decoy fish, the shark avows, “I should warn you about the next page. / Because if you look, you might scream. // I saw the two scariest creatures I’ve ever seen.” Against a cloud-studded blue sky, Cortés depicts a black woman and a white man. After its release (alert readers might spy its post-encounter fin tag) the shark regales many, “from the whale / to anchovies,” all of whom scoff at its tale’s “complete impossibility.” Cortés’ premise has child appeal and even some STEM utility, and his lovely illustrations invite contemplation of the teeming worlds above and beneath the sea. The hip-hop–style rhymes yield a somewhat wobbly narrator, who conveys both an ignorance of humans and boats and a glib facility with “faces with beards,” “heads with two ears,” printed books, and the passage of two weeks’ time. The depictions of the curve of the Earth in space and of the sky—cloudy or starry, always vast—are lush, but their expansiveness seems aligned more with the artist’s expressive impulses than the shark’s-eye story arc.
Accept a slight current of illogic and enjoy this tale’s accomplished visuals and percussive rhymes. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-616-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Black Sheep/Akashic
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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
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