Young readers will be hooked.
A piranha who dreams of dining in the finest restaurants? Not your usual fish tale!
Samson doesn’t want to be like the other piranhas, who eat the same boring food every day (depicted bloodlessly as fish bones), stick close to home, and enjoy their comfortable old routines. Samson doesn’t want to be just another fish in the sea. He wants adventure—to explore and to swim upstream. But what Samson wants most of all is to eat “fine food in the fanciest restaurants.” But what restaurant would welcome such a frightening customer, with his “fearsome features and terrible teeth”? So, wearing an elaborate disguise and making a reservation under the name Mr. Rana, he succeeds, until he suffers a costume malfunction and everyone scatters. Solution? Open his own restaurant and serve all of those other mask-wearing fish looking only for good food and a place to fit in. Styling Samson with enormous eyes and a cute underbite, Bentley’s pen-and-ink illustrations manage to make a fearsome piranha look earnest and endearing as he seeks to be himself and find his place in the world. Attractive endpapers establish the theme with careful table settings awaiting schools of fishy customers. In the final spread, it isn’t Samson wearing a disguise, and young readers will delight in recognizing just who that is behind the mask.
Young readers will be hooked. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-233537-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers.
Echoing the meter of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Ward uses catchy original rhymes to describe the variety of nests birds create.
Each sweet stanza is complemented by a factual, engaging description of the nesting habits of each bird. Some of the notes are intriguing, such as the fact that the hummingbird uses flexible spider web to construct its cup-shaped nest so the nest will stretch as the chicks grow. An especially endearing nesting behavior is that of the emperor penguin, who, with unbelievable patience, incubates the egg between his tummy and his feet for up to 60 days. The author clearly feels a mission to impart her extensive knowledge of birds and bird behavior to the very young, and she’s found an appealing and attractive way to accomplish this. The simple rhymes on the left page of each spread, written from the young bird’s perspective, will appeal to younger children, and the notes on the right-hand page of each spread provide more complex factual information that will help parents answer further questions and satisfy the curiosity of older children. Jenkins’ accomplished collage illustrations of common bird species—woodpecker, hummingbird, cowbird, emperor penguin, eagle, owl, wren—as well as exotics, such as flamingoes and hornbills, are characteristically naturalistic and accurate in detail.
A good bet for the youngest bird-watchers. (author’s note, further resources) (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-2116-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2014
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