Huneck offers another drolly humorous story in his series about Sally, the black Labrador, who this time visits a “dog-friendly lodge” in a wintry mountain setting. Sally’s first-person narrative describes arriving at the lodge and meeting new canine companions, including two rescue dogs, as well as activities such as snowshoeing, snowboarding and skiing. When Sally tries to take a shortcut back to the lodge, she loses her way and has to be located by the rescue dog pair. The human owners are never shown directly, and the dogs get along quite well on their own, having their own fun and solving their own problems. The refreshingly simple text is hand-lettered at the bottom of each page, with just a couple of sentences per page. The innocent tone of the uncomplicated story is well-matched to Huneck’s distinctive woodcuts, showing Sally and friends in striking contrast against the wooden floor of the lodge or cavorting on the snowy mountainside. (Picture book. 2-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8109-7061-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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Hee haw.
11
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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. 29, 2018
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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Froggy's back (Froggy Learns to Swim, 1995, etc.) and on his first day of school, he wakes up late and goes to class in his underwear! No, that's only a dream—Froggy's parents wake him up just in time and they have breakfast together before leapfrogging to the bus stop. At school, Froggy gets a name tag, falls off his chair, and teaches the class—and the teacher—and the principal- -how to swim, an act that includes singing ``Bubble bubble, toot toot. Chicken, airplane, soldier.'' When his parents pick him up at the bus stop at the end of the day, they discover that he has forgotten his lunch box in school. `` `Oh, Froggy. Will you ever learn?' said his mother. `That's why I'm going to school, Mom!' '' The accessible writing has plenty of gratifying opportunities for funny sounds when read out loud, and is also endearingly wry: ``He liked his name. It was the first word he knew how to read. It was the only word he knew how to read.'' Remkiewicz's bright watercolors feature punchy, bouncy, bug-eyed animals wearing emphatically exaggerated expressions: This bunch is easy to love. (Picture book. 2-6)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-670-86726-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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