This fails to either ask kids to do the math or truly entertain.
A little girl and her talking dog use addition and subtraction to plan a birthday party in this Korean import.
Ruffer’s birthday is in four days, and Nora, an Asian girl with freckles, and her pup are busily preparing. First the invitations—11 for Nora’s three friends and their pets: 3+6+2=11. Then the waiting; subtraction helps Ruffer keep track of how many days are left. A shortage of eggs sends Nora and Ruffer to the store, where they use subtraction to determine sale prices. Finally it’s party time, and more arithmetic is used to add up gifts and determine the winner of ring toss. Backmatter links math to the real world and teaches readers a (unexciting) math game. A final spread presents a few more math problems, answers filled in. In all, the story is too long and involved to really serve as a quick math lesson, as Michael Garland does so well in How Many Mice? (2007), and it lacks the humor and energy of Ethan Long’s The Wing Wing Brothers Math Spectacular! (2012) or Caroline Stills’ Mice Mischief, illustrated by Judith Rossell (2014). Spot and spread artwork adequately portrays the math but doesn’t do much to extend the story, and the characters sometimes just look awkward. Observant children who have experience shopping also may raise eyebrows at the prices in the store.
This fails to either ask kids to do the math or truly entertain. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-939248-06-0
Page Count: 38
Publisher: TanTan
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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