If older volumes of simple alphabet books have seen better days, this one will fill the bill for a replacement.
This alphabet of the animal kingdom has a Victorian-scrapbook feel.
Among the flurry of themed alphabet books, traditional straightforward ABC offerings tend to be overlooked or shuffled off to the side. This one deserves a second look due to the clean composition, decorative letters (both upper- and lowercase) and clear images of the animals featured for each letter. C is for cheetah, camel, chameleon, caterpillar and crab. M is for macaw, mantis and monkeys. A few selections may be unfamiliar to young readers. Q is for quetzal, quail and quelea (another type of bird); U is for umbrella bird and uakari (a monkey); X is for X-ray fish, and Y is for yak. Z has three creatures: zebra, zorilla (a skunklike creature) and zander (a fish). The full-color illustrations are laid out on spacious sepia backgrounds with page borders that complement the ornate lettering. It is too bad that there is no legend or identification except for the one word naming the animal. Neither child nor parent is apt to know what a uakari is, beyond the obvious fact that it is a shaggy-furred, bald-faced monkey. A companion title, Animal 123, applies the same design principles to a counting-book that counts up from 1 caterpillar to 20 frogs, then by tens to 100 fish.
If older volumes of simple alphabet books have seen better days, this one will fill the bill for a replacement. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77085-456-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Firefly
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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