One of life’s little skills—making change—gets an airing in yet another elementary math story from the indefatigable Murphy (see above, etc.). The Sluggers are desperately in need of new T-shirts for their upcoming championship game. They decide upon the time-honored car-wash route; the crux of this lesson in adding and subtracting is in making correct change—which, of course, brings the decimal into play as well. They charge $3.50 for each washing, then contend with the many variations of change-making: “The driver gave CJ a ten-dollar bill. CJ counted. ‘Hmm, 3 dollars and 50 cents plus 2 quarters makes 4 dollars, plus 1 dollar makes 5 dollars, plus 5 dollars makes 10 dollars.’ He gave her back 6 dollars and 2 quarters.” On the afternoon goes in an air of jollity—Saltzberg (Hip, Hip, Hooray, Day, p. 264, etc.) keeps the mood light with his simple, gingery artwork—with CJ toting the lucre on his clipboard. As Murphy’s notes at the end suggest, lots of math/money games can be spun off from this story and the basic ability to make correct change (one that seems to have escaped many store clerks) can start on the road to becoming second nature. (short bibliography) (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-9)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-028920-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
An uneven U.S. debut for Atak, easy peasy for fans of the I Spy genre. (Picture book. 6-8)
Role reversals rule in this (mostly) wordless import.
From the title page, which depicts the head of a child/man (depending on orientation), on, a veteran German illustrator offers even not very attentive viewers a succession of silly switches. Penguins and polar bears share space with owls and moose, among others, in a stylized jungle scene; a rabbit aims a blunderbuss at a frightened hunter; firefighters battle a fountain with flame-spurting hoses; a giant lad takes his tiny parents out for a walk—and that’s not all. Though he paints in a crude style that suits the obvious, easy-to-spot swaps, one scene crowded with small cartoon and comic-book figures from Bart Simpson and Darth Vader to Batman—all with switched heads— adds a dollop of sly humor. The aforementioned gun, an Indian with a feathered headdress, a glimpse of nude swimmers behind a man retrieving a stick for his canine owner and other such “sophistications” are less clever than off-kilter, though. So too is the thoroughly dispensable nonsense rhyme (“I found it quite funny, / Until a snow bunny / Ate all of my paper / —’Twas quite a caper!”) opposite the title page.
An uneven U.S. debut for Atak, easy peasy for fans of the I Spy genre. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-909263-04-8
Page Count: 30
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
Not awe-ful.
The creator of An Awesome Book! (2012) and its titularly similar companions offers an alphabet of uplift.
In lines of sometimes forcibly compelled rhyme (“Q is for Quiet / To escape from the madness / R is for Reading / But also for radness”), Clayton blends hand-lettered, characteristically inspirational watchwords and exhortations to dream big, aim high and make the most of the day, the world and life. These he surrounds with a smattering of pictures of unlabeled but common items and animals that are drawn in an engagingly simple, artless way and start with the appropriate letter. (Generally anyway: Viewers will likely puzzle over the guitar on the “A” page, and is the inscrutable lumplet in “C” a Cocoon? A sea Cucumber?) Children may enjoy the intellectual exercise of identifying the tiny images more than winkling personal meaning out of “E is for Everything / under the sun” or “V is for Values / and keeping them true,” but the feel-good tone is catching, and the sentiments make fertile discussion fodder.
Not awe-ful. (Inspirational picture book. 6-8, adult)Pub Date: March 25, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5745-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
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