Perhaps it’s time to chime in on her rallying cry: “Boycott dinosaur lunch boxes! No more dinosaur books at story time!” As...
For children (and grown-ups) who are sick of dinos, dinos, dinos 24/7, here’s a plea from “Meg Atherium” to remember the giant prehistoric mammals.
“I’d like your undivided attention because I’ve got some complaining to do,” opens the shaggy ground sloth in Lynch’s minimally detailed cartoons. Sure, dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 120 million years and then disappeared through tantalizingly mysterious causes. So what? Why should they get all the movies, books, posters, breakfast cereals, pajamas and lunch boxes? Claiming that nonreptiles deserve at least as much respect, Meg introduces herself and a gallery of equally jumbo Cenozoic Era animals. These include Baluchitherium (Meg calls him “Big Baluka”) and the 7-foot-tall bird Diatryma, which also mysteriously died out. The optional voice-over is particularly lively. Paired to images of extinct creatures that look like plush toys and respond to taps with a diverse array of silly noises or small animations, Meg’s argument may strike many as compelling.
Perhaps it’s time to chime in on her rallying cry: “Boycott dinosaur lunch boxes! No more dinosaur books at story time!” As if—but she makes a strong case. (iPad informational app. 6-8)Pub Date: March 28, 2013
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: 3r Interactive LLC
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A gleeful game for budding naturalists.
Artfully cropped animal portraits challenge viewers to guess which end they’re seeing.
In what will be a crowd-pleasing and inevitably raucous guessing game, a series of close-up stock photos invite children to call out one of the titular alternatives. A page turn reveals answers and basic facts about each creature backed up by more of the latter in a closing map and table. Some of the posers, like the tail of an okapi or the nose on a proboscis monkey, are easy enough to guess—but the moist nose on a star-nosed mole really does look like an anus, and the false “eyes” on the hind ends of a Cuyaba dwarf frog and a Promethea moth caterpillar will fool many. Better yet, Lavelle saves a kicker for the finale with a glimpse of a small parasitical pearlfish peeking out of a sea cucumber’s rear so that the answer is actually face and butt. “Animal identification can be tricky!” she concludes, noting that many of the features here function as defenses against attack: “In the animal world, sometimes your butt will save your face and your face just might save your butt!” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A gleeful game for budding naturalists. (author’s note) (Informational picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781728271170
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks eXplore
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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