A low-key alternative to Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross’ Tadpole’s Promise (2005) and other more true-to-nature takes on the...
A sweet portrait of an interspecies friendship that survives major physical changes.
Having hatched side by side, tadpole and fish think they’re brothers—until the one develops a pair of legs, and the other acquires scales: “Gee whiz! I get to be a frog? / I’ll hop above and swim below!” / “But I’ll still be a fish. / Then how will we be bros?” It all turns out to be a nonissue, though, because rather than paddling off to meet others of their respective kinds, the two remain best buds. In the illustrations, simple, painted and combed cut-paper pond denizens, cardboard items and (for eggs) buttons have been laid over crumpled or otherwise textured backgrounds. Tapping triggers emphatic sound effects, as well as prompting the figures to twitch energetically, drift, spin or create clouds of paper-dot bubbles. Selecting the optional audio narration also highlights each word of the rhymed verses in succession. A monotonous, dispensable sung rendition of the entire text comes attached.
A low-key alternative to Jeanne Willis and Tony Ross’ Tadpole’s Promise (2005) and other more true-to-nature takes on the theme. (Requires iOS 7 and above.) (iPad storybook app. 5-7)Pub Date: March 13, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Valdas Barvainis
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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