This will interest kids who love their vehicles, but the text simply doesn’t take flight.
The author of Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (2011) moves on to a different kind of vehicle with this rhyming story about the invention of alternative sleighs for Santa’s Christmas Eve deliveries.
Just two weeks before Christmas, Santa’s elves discover that his usual sleigh, stored away for a year, has been damaged. The elves decide to hold a contest to build a new sleigh, with Santa choosing the winning entry. Twelve teams are formed, with one new invention revealed over each of the next 12 days. The sleighs are wildly imaginative, with different types of power and similarities to actual modes of transportation. On Christmas Eve, one rebel elf who has worked alone reveals Santa’s original sleigh restored to pristine condition. Santa opts for this traditional choice, so the elves take off on a race with their new inventions. The text uses varying rhyme schemes, starting off well but becoming more difficult to read as the story progresses. Several terminal word pairs do not rhyme correctly, slowing readers down. Busy, bright illustrations capture the intricacies of the unusual inventions and the antics of the elf crew. The elves appear androgynous, some with light skin and some with brown skin; a few have gray hair. Notably, the elf who restores Santa’s beloved sleigh has brown skin; Santa is white.
This will interest kids who love their vehicles, but the text simply doesn’t take flight. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4521-4514-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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