Bow-WOW! Who needs 100 dogs when just one cuddly, fluffy, perfect pup will do?
A girl uses cunning to get exactly what she wants.
“I want 100 dogs,” the child muses. Her nonplussed parents raise a practical question: “Where would 100 dogs sleep?” Their daughter has a ready answer: “My 100 dogs will sleep on my bed.” Parents: “More likely, 100 dogs would sleep on you.” Reconsidering, the girl asks for 90 dogs. But how will she walk them? After all, 90 dogs would walk her. And so it goes, with the child subsequently decreasing her request by 10 each time and her parents asking realistic questions about that quantity, listening to her responses, then explaining why her plans still won’t work. Examples: 70 dogs need lots of food; grooming 30 dogs would be very messy; and—unhappiest prospect—guess who’d clean up after 10 dogs “go number 2”? Finally, the child “settles” for just one and chooses a floppy-eared pooch at a shelter. Her parents can’t believe they talked her out of 100 dogs; the girl can’t believe she talked her parents into getting one—clearly, her plan all along. This is a humorous, imaginative tale with a comically ironic ending; the child-parent relationship is close, warm, and playful. There’s good counting-backward-by-10s practice here, too. The digital illustrations are funny, with each parental question and the girl’s responses vividly, dynamically portrayed. The gap-toothed daughter and both parents are tan-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Bow-WOW! Who needs 100 dogs when just one cuddly, fluffy, perfect pup will do? (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2023
ISBN: 9781797214405
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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