Meet Ten-Gallon Bart, sheriff of Dog City, the most peaceful town in the West, because he’s done a bang-up job. But Bart’s tired of being brave and bold, he’s ready to hang up his star and retire. Then the headline shrieks, “Billy the Kid on the Loose! Headed for Dog City on the Noon Train.” Bart rounds up Miss Kitty, Wyatt Burp, Wild Bill Hiccup and Buffalo Gal, who stand behind him (literally) when he meets the train. But the minute Billy the Kid licks his lips and yells, “I’m BAA-AA-AA-D,” everyone in town runs for cover except Bart. He faces the big bad goat head-on, but Billy head-butts him out cold and chomps his hat and star. The town comes to Bart’s rescue and together they alter Billy’s personality. The textured collages corral every bit of Wild West punnery in this laugh-out-loud romp. The large format gives full rein to Donohue’s artwork to detail the wild and woolly action and close-ups, personify the animal characters and exaggerate the ten-gallon hatful of humor overall. A quick-draw of quick-witted guffaws, guaranteed to get your goat and make readers grin. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7614-5246-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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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