Tuneful.
Alligator Slim decides to swap the blues for jazz, trading the swamp for the city.
He finds a hotel and auditions at a club called The Zoo. The crowd loves Alligator’s sound, but while the musicians relax after their gig, jealous Weasel steals the gator’s sax. After a fruitless search for his instrument, his money low, Alligator decides to head back to the swamp and the blues. Swinging by The Zoo for one last listen, he spots Weasel on stage. “He screeched and he blared and the audience moaned. / ‘He’s hurting our ears with that bad saxophone!’ / ‘That sax is all right!’ said Alligator Slim. / He walked up to Weasel and snatched the sax from him.” Alligator plays, reigniting the crowd, and gracefully accepts Weasel’s apology. Alligator Slim’s success reaches the swamp critters, who arrive cityside to hear him play. Pittman’s upbeat verses occasionally settle for an awkward rhyme or some bumpy scansion. “Alligator Slim was in a terrible bind! / The days went by, but his sax he did not find.” Bailey’s digital compositions pair Alligator’s glowing green with the deep purple-browns of club crowds and dark, cobbled streets lit with lamps. Her pictures teem with busy, anthropomorphic animals preoccupied in amusing ways. Pittman provides a pithy note on jazz; Bailey’s spot illustration shows Alligator’s quartet heading out on the road.
Tuneful. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4556-2422-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Pelican
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.
After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9780063436121
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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