Clear, direct and anatomically correct; an excellent entryway for the many anticipated questions about childbirth.
The third installment in the Let’s Talk About You and Me series finds Harris back where adults expect to find her—discussing the human body for the youngest set.
Gus and Nellie’s mom is having a baby. The sibling pair from Who Has What? (2011) and Who’s in My Family? (2012) could not be more excited. But of course they have plenty of questions, too. Harris admirably begins by stressing that the baby is not growing inside mommy’s tummy but in her uterus. (“The uterus is just below a girl’s or woman’s tummy and is very soft and stretchy.”) Each spread represents a month of the pregnancy, but the passage of time is subtly hidden within Westcott’s cheery illustrations, rather than as a defined calendar counting down the days. Mommy can also be seen to be growing larger, with the fetus varying in size from a pencil-point dot to a watermelon. Amid the simple facts of development, Harris includes extra tidbits aimed squarely at the curiosities of child readers—the baby starts out with a tail! It pees a little inside the womb! However, the mention of how the baby was actually made is kept purely at a cellular level; adults may welcome the freedom to fill in that gap as they see fit.
Clear, direct and anatomically correct; an excellent entryway for the many anticipated questions about childbirth. (Informational picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7636-3630-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes.
Another entry in the how-much-I-love-you genre.
The opening spread shows a blue elephant-and-child pair, the child atop the adult, white hearts arcing between their uplifted trunks: “You’re a gift and a blessing in every way. / I love you more each and every day.” From there, the adult elephant goes on to tell the child how they are loved more than all sorts of things, some rhyming better than others: “I love you more than all the spaghetti served in Rome, // and more than each and every dog loves her bone.” More than stars, fireflies, “all the languages spoken in the world,” “all the dancers that have ever twirled,” all the kisses ever given and miles ever driven, “all the adventures you have ahead,” and “all the peanut butter and jelly spread on bread!” Representative of all the world’s languages are “I love you” in several languages (with no pronunciation help): English, Sioux, French, German, Swahili, Spanish, Hawaiian, Chinese, and Arabic (these two last in Roman characters only). Bold colors and simple illustrations with no distracting details keep readers’ focus on the main ideas. Dashed lines give the artwork (and at least one word on every spread) the look of 2-D sewn toys.
So sweet it’ll have readers heading for their toothbrushes. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4926-8398-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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