Challenging, fascinating, and fun, this book is entertaining for adults and children to enjoy together.
Can you find the smiling purple eggplant in a page filled with different shades of purple? The basketball in a similarly orange page?
Each double-page spread in this large search-and-find book focuses on a different color, hiding everyday objects for children to find. “Can you find it in…yellow?” Six different objects, animate and inanimate, shown on each right hand page are hidden on the opposite one, concealed in the asymmetrical, complex, mosaiclike pieces of different shapes and in many vibrant shades of that one color. For yellow, they are a bee, a slice of lemon, a block of cheese, a duck, a banana, and a pencil. A bonus question at the bottom of the page shows one shape—for yellow, a diamond—for readers to find as well. Although most of the objects are familiar to young children, their shapes are spiky and angular, in keeping with the mosaic-inspired composition on the verso, which makes them challenging but interesting to spot. The darker colors, especially black, are especially difficult, but the other pages are vibrant and colorful. The extra-large size of this book facilitates the game but may make it difficult to fit in standard board-book shelves.
Challenging, fascinating, and fun, this book is entertaining for adults and children to enjoy together. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-91027-774-4
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Words & Pictures
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable.
You think you know shapes? Animals? Blend them together, and you might see them both a little differently!
What a mischievous twist on a concept book! With wordplay and a few groan-inducing puns, Neal creates connections among animals and shapes that are both unexpected and so seemingly obvious that readers might wonder why they didn’t see them all along. Of course, a “lazy turtle” meeting an oval would create the side-splitting combo of a “SLOW-VAL.” A dramatic page turn transforms a deeply saturated, clean-lined green oval by superimposing a head and turtle shell atop, with watery blue ripples completing the illusion. Minimal backgrounds and sketchy, impressionistic detailing keep the focus right on the zany animals. Beginning with simple shapes, the geometric forms become more complicated as the book advances, taking readers from a “soaring bird” that meets a triangle to become a “FLY-ANGLE” to a “sleepy lion” nonagon “YAWN-AGON.” Its companion text, Animal Colors, delves into color theory, this time creating entirely hybrid animals, such as the “GREEN WHION” with maned head and whale’s tail made from a “blue whale and a yellow lion.” It’s a compelling way to visualize color mixing, and like Animal Shapes, it’s got verve. Who doesn’t want to shout out that a yellow kangaroo/green moose blend is a “CHARTREUSE KANGAMOOSE”?
Innovative and thoroughly enjoyable. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0534-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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Good for a giggle from preschool readers despite its slight imperfections.
A brightly illustrated story told in rhyme about mixed-up robots getting ready for the day.
Holub and Dickason team up for another title echoing the style of their similarly formatted Hello Knights! and Hello Ninjas! (both 2018). Here, the titular robots are having trouble getting ready for the day. They put socks on top of shoes and even forget how to eat their cereal, pouring milk on their heads and flipping their bowls upside down on the table. The confusion comes to a climax in a double gatefold in which the robots realize that they need a reboot, correcting their routines. Young readers will delight in the silliness: underpants on heads, bathing in clothes. Holub’s rhyming text works well for the most part and includes some charming turns of phrase, such as “brushing bolts” in place of brushing teeth. Dickason’s illustrations use a consistent palette of mostly primary colors and feature 1960s-style robots drawn with antennae, motherboards on boxy chests, and wheels for feet. The pages are busy and packed, allowing for new discoveries upon each read, though this busyness argues for use with older toddlers. It’s not entirely clear where the robots are headed (school?) or whether or not they’re also ETs (they fly away on a spaceship), but the story is fun enough to overlook those muddled details.
Good for a giggle from preschool readers despite its slight imperfections. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1871-4
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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