Delightful—and not the least bit troublesome.
Twins go in search of trouble—and find it!
The text doesn’t assign Ellis and Erin pronouns but does identify them as twins. The siblings have light-brown skin, and Ellis wears glasses and has short, curly, dark hair; Erin’s hair is the same color but straighter and longer. These differences in appearance will help readers keep the twins straight as they cause playful chaos in their search for “trouble.” To no avail, they “rummage through the bags and boxes in the garage” and look for “trouble” at the bottom of trash bins and up a big tree. Splashing in a mud puddle brings glee and perhaps an assumption on readers’ parts that this muddy mess is, at last, where the twins “find trouble.” But they continue their search only to dejectedly go inside, “disappointed they couldn’t find trouble.” Dyer’s bright, lively collage art shows the children, dirty and disheveled, tracking mud and detritus into the house, which may again prompt readers to shake their heads knowingly—clearly these children have found trouble, whether they think so or not. But a twist ending, textually reliant on an avoidance of capitalizing Trouble as a proper noun in prior pages, reveals that Trouble is the name of the children’s cat. They find her in a satisfying culmination of their (perhaps) inadvertently mischievous search.
Delightful—and not the least bit troublesome. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-84976-659-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tate/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A delightfully silly celebration of familial love.
A child in search of the best hugger takes a bedtime tour of the world’s most unusual embraces.
In the opening pages of this rhyming picture book, an unnamed narrator asks a curly-haired, tan-skinned child who they think gives the best hugs. At the narrator’s behest, the protagonist spends their bedtime routine receiving affection from a wacky cast of creatures, ranging from meerkats to porcupines to narwhals. These animals have a variety of body types, but even those with a lack of limbs still express their love; the seahorse, for example, gives the child a “smooch” right before bathtime, and a grinning cobra offers the child a “clinch,” wrapping itself around their leg. Although many of the animals prove to be more prickly than cozy—the narrator points out, for example, the sharpness of bird beaks and porcupine quills—even the snuggliest koalas and bears cannot compare to the best hug of all: a parent’s embrace right before bedtime. The use of second-person address combined with the protagonist’s beautifully illustrated facial expressions and the buoyant, clever lines of verse render this book a hilarious and whimsical ride sure to delight both children and the adults who read to them. The pictures and text work together to create a clear narrative arc for the protagonist, and though the ending is a bit predictable, it’s nevertheless a wonderful payoff. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A delightfully silly celebration of familial love. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-5476-1236-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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