A cheery, creative look at celebrating being different from the crowd.
In a copy-cat world where all dogs look the same, one dachshund finds her own identity and learns to love being different.
A bouncy, rhyming text presents a city with rows and rows of identical dachshunds driving on busy roads or engaging in activities such as swimming, sailing, and camping. Each group of dogs is dressed identically, with the members of each set lined up in robotic, expressionless fashion. One female dog, however, dances to a different drummer. She wears a colorful cap and a rainbow-hued scarf, and she listens to her own music playing on headphones. She feels she doesn’t fit in anywhere, so she leaves home to find a new life. She lands in Doggywood, where she does fit in, as many other dogs there look just like her. She meets another outlier, dressed in a black cap and Nordic sweater, who’s “whistling a different tune.” That dog causes her to be proud of her outsider status, and the unnamed heroine returns to her original town, where she has been missed. Her return sparks an outbreak of individuality, with all the dachshunds making a group decision to dress in wildly different attire. While the sudden transformation from boring conformity to intriguing originality is a bit abrupt, the story successfully introduces the idea that just one individual may effect a change in a larger group. Graphically striking, patterned illustrations use vibrant colors and a wide variety of perspectives and page formats to keep visual interest high.
A cheery, creative look at celebrating being different from the crowd. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-236726-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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