A charming picture book for the very young, whether or not they are fussy about clothes.
A little owl struggles with accessory problems.
Little Owl lives with his Mommy in a tree house on the edge of the city park. He loves all the things little owls usually love: doing arithmetic, eating ice cream and riding a scooter. There is one flaw in this idyllic scenario: He does not love his new scarf. It is too long, too orange and too itchy. His mother insists that he wear it. He does his best to surreptitiously “lose” the scarf, by using it as a ribbon for a present for Grandpa and by putting it in a suitcase bound for Peru, but Mommy always seems to find it. Until one day…Little Owl returns from a trip to the zoo, minus the hated scarf. This piece of bad luck turns out to be an opportunity for a bit of mother-child bonding. This time, Mommy lets her son choose the yarn for a new scarf, a tasteful blue, and Little Owl is much happier. The new scarf is soft, the right length and not orange. The mystery of where the orange scarf went is revealed in the last picture, sure to elicit chuckles. Feeney’s naïve pencil-and-duotone illustrations, which use printmaking techniques to add interesting textures, complement the simple narrative and gentle message; both pacing and subtle adjustments to Little Owl’s expression add humor.
A charming picture book for the very young, whether or not they are fussy about clothes. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-449-81411-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
“What’s big?” asks a pleasant pink pig as he compares himself to cows, cars, trucks, streets, the neighborhood, the city, and the earth, and finally to the universe, which “makes everything seem small.” Although the concept of relative size is well taken, the expansion from self to universe is flawed by the incongruity of some of the images. The pig and the cow squeeze into a model T–type car that is stuck in the mud, but are towed by a modern tow truck into a modern city. In the final sequence, the sun seems smaller than the earth. A simple verse pattern carries the lilting text with each verse ending with the repetitive phrase “What’s bigger than . . .” Florian’s double-paged watercolor paints and colored pencil are soft and muted, sometimes too muted, particularly in background areas. Occasional flashes of humor illustrate the text as the cow and the pig travel through a city populated by animals at work and at play. It ends with an amusing image of the pig as a constellation in the universe. Not Florian’s best effort, but a good conversation-starter with a young child about comparative size. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-17125-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Younger audiences will be screaming “There it is!” from the get-go.
A small child plays hide-and-seek with a surprisingly elusive (except to viewers) elephant.
“OK. You hide,” says the child. Says the elephant: “I must warn you though. I’m VERY good.” The dark-skinned, springy-haired, and increasingly confused-looking child fruitlessly searches house and yard for the pachyderm—who positively dominates each scene whether “hiding” beneath curtains, under a coverlet on top of the bed, or behind a skinny tree. Applying thin color to rough-surfaced paper with splashy, Chris Raschka–style freedom, Barrow supplies the questing child with parents (a biracial couple, to judge from family portraits on the wall), legibly hand-lettered dialogue, and a small dog who has no trouble at all seeing the elephant. A tap on the shoulder brings the game to an end at last, whereupon a tortoise’s invitation to a round of tag presents an easier challenge. Or does it? “I must warn you though….” Beyond the sheer absurdity, children will delight in details, such as the wide-screen TV the elephant holds in one scene, the child’s dad so focused on the soccer game on the screen that he asks, “What elephant?” and the sly alterations to the family portraits on the rear endpapers.
Younger audiences will be screaming “There it is!” from the get-go. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-776570-08-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Gecko Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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