A unique celebration of playful creativity.
Asked to find specific items for her friends, a well-intentioned magpie seems to get it all wrong—or does she?
Adept at “finding things,” the magpie asks her friends if there’s anything she can find for them. Weary of winter, the goat asks for “spring!” but is not amused when the magpie presents a metal spring. Feeling lonely, the mouse wants “another mouse” and is very disappointed with the computer mouse the magpie locates. The homeless hog wants “a pen of my very own” to live in, not the ballpoint pen the magpie finds. The hungry squirrel asks for a “nut” to eat, not the bit of hardware the magpie retrieves. After asking for a “pair of glasses,” the farsighted owl’s surprised when the magpie returns with drinking glasses. And the boy who asks for a baseball “bat” is terrified with the live bat the magpie tosses him. How could the magpie get everything so wrong? But with some “creative thinking,” the magpie’s friends eventually “turn blunders into wonders!” With its clever wordplay, the text humorously introduces the concept of homonyms. These are explained in a “Did You Know?” section in the backmatter while the “About the Art” section details how scrap artist Hundley assembled found objects on white backgrounds to produce the intriguing, striking illustrations, which appropriately reinforce the magpie’s penchant for finding things.
A unique celebration of playful creativity. (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-6844-6214-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Editions
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably...
A lad finds a penguin on his doorstep and resolutely sets out to return it in this briefly told import.
Eventually, he ends up rowing it all the way back to Antarctica, braving waves and storms, filling in the time by telling it stories. But then, feeling lonely after he drops his silent charge off, he belatedly realizes that it was probably lonely too, and turns back to find it. Seeing Jeffers’s small, distant figures in wide, simply brushed land- and sea-scapes, young viewers will probably cotton to the penguin’s feelings before the boy himself does—but all’s well that ends well, and the reunited companions are last seen adrift together in the wide blue sea.
Readers who (inexplicably) find David Lawrence’s Pickle and Penguin (2004) just too weird may settle in more comfortably with this—slightly—less offbeat friendship tale. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-399-24503-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dog lovers and young Dr. Moreaus alike will guffaw.
Split pages allow mixing and matching sections of 10 purebred canines.
Forget cockapoos and labradoodles—flipping the three segments here back and forth makes for some truly unlikely hybrids: “I’m a Bulldog— / Yorkshire Terrier— / Great Dane mix”; “I’m a Komondor— / Greyhound— / Poodle mix”; “I’m a Dachshund— / Shar-Pei— / Dalmatian mix.” Ball (Flip-O-Storic, 2011) cranks up the drollery with a set of big, handsome pooches drawn and colored to set off their distinctive characteristics, posed naturalistically against plain yellow backgrounds, and looking up or out with doggy devotion. She also adds the occasional tail-pulling puppy, silly hat, or other comical side business. In addition to the identifying captions, Garczynski contributes a table of descriptive information about each breed at the beginning. This includes to-scale silhouettes that are helpful since all of the interior dogs are rendered the same size so that the transitions more or less match up. (Although the Yorkie’s stubby forelegs still make a peculiar mismatch with the lanky hind limbs of the Great Dane.) Also, each sturdy strip features a “personal” observation, such as the Dalmatian’s “I’m known for my distinctive spots. If I open my mouth, you’ll even see spots in there.” Aside from the note of condescension in the Shar-Pei’s claim that its tongue “was once thought to ward off evil spirits,” these last are at least innocuous and sometimes informative.
Dog lovers and young Dr. Moreaus alike will guffaw. (Novelty picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1310-5
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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