Dinophiles and budding wordsmiths will be delighted.
A well-armored sesquipedal-o-saur picks a “quintessential” companion in his second outing.
Word-loving Theo’s distress at seeing his prehistoric peers with proper pets dissipates after he latches on to a small and solitary saber tooth tiger: “I will call you Fang.” Unfortunately, the manic mammal proves hard to tame—digging holes in the lawn and leaping on all and sundry despite firm commands to “Seat oneself,” and “Remain.” Distress transmogrifies to delight, however, once Theo realizes that the problem is a simple failure to communicate, and if a switch from words to hisses and growls doesn’t calm the creature completely (“Fang was a little dramatic”), it does quickly put the kibosh on the worst of the bad behavior. Though not all the alternative locutions a “Defino-Dino” pops up to deliver will enlighten bumfuzzled readers (“Mischievous means troublesome”) and Moran’s decision to give Theo’s dad a necktie of the same color and pattern as Fang’s spotted hide in the cartoon illustrations leaves the toothy therapsid’s future perhaps in doubt, still the buddies’ bond is sealed with a closing clinch. The theme of finding and sharing a common language adds a buff to the basic vocabulary building. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Dinophiles and budding wordsmiths will be delighted. (glossary) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-46432-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Silly reads for new readers to dig into.
A turnip-loving duck and its friends defend their garden.
Alas, the duck, sheep, dog, and donkey immediately discover the eponymous pest in the garden when it (a groundhog?) eats a row of beans. The duck is frantic that turnips are next, but instead the pest eats the sheep’s favorite crop: corn. Peas occupy the next row, and the pest gobbles them up, too. Instead of despairing, however, the donkey cries, “Yippee! He ate ALL THE PEAS!” and catching the others’ puzzled looks, continues, “I don’t like peas.” After this humorous twist, the only uneaten row is sown with turnips, and the duck leaps to devour them before the pest can do so. In a satisfying, funny conclusion, the duck beams when the dog, sheep, and donkey resolve to plant a new garden and protect it with a fence, only to find out that it will exclude not just the groundhog, but the duck, too. A companion release, What Is Chasing Duck?, has the same brand of humor and boldly outlined figures rendered in a bright palette, but its storyline doesn’t come together as well since it’s unclear why the duck is scared and why the squirrel that was chasing it doesn’t recognize the others when they turn and chase him at book’s end.
Silly reads for new readers to dig into. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-544-94165-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Young readers will clamor to ride along.
Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.
Responding to a plaintive “Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”—“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away. . . .” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape—and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage.
Young readers will clamor to ride along. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8037-2922-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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