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
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
Low grade.
A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
