A charming wordless picture book for young children that conveys a message of friendship with a deceptively simple...
A cat pursues his dream of flight and succeeds, with a little help from some feathery friends, in another delightfully entertaining picture book from author/illustrator Bartlett.
A deft visual storyteller with a talent for quirky, child-friendly humor, Bartlett has created this gently comical narrative through double- and single-spread illustrations—colored and graphite-style line drawings of appealing characters against expansive white space. And in lieu of words, he relies on an expressive use of question marks and exclamation points. The book begins as a pink, googly-eyed little bird loop-de-loops over the head of a chubby orange tabby. Far from eyeing the bird as a potential meal, the cat admires the bird’s aerial gymnastics (represented throughout the book by a lively dotted line), and he’s clearly struck by a desire to go soaring himself. But how? As the enterprising kitty experiments with various ways he might take flight, the puzzled bird that inspired him watches his efforts and is joined by other curious feathered observers. (Parents might use the humorous birds to encourage young children to get in some counting practice: Bartlett increases and decreases their numbers page by page, from one to five and back again over the course of the tale.) Each of the cat’s ideas—a rickety chair, a bunch of helium balloons and a pair of cardboard wings among them—propels the determined feline to try, try again. The little birds, meanwhile, flit through the pages watching the cat’s doomed-to-fail efforts until, after perching on telephone wires to engage in a noisy confab (rendered as a witty multiplication of question marks and exclamation points), they decide to help the hapless tabby attain his wish. Bartlett, who offers the book’s dedication “For all those who dare to try,” ends his good-hearted tale with an unexpected visual giggle underscored by one final question mark.
A charming wordless picture book for young children that conveys a message of friendship with a deceptively simple illustrative style, gentle humor and certain well-placed punctuation marks.Pub Date: July 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7339086-6-5
Page Count: 50
Publisher: Sandhill Publishers, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
Earnest and well meaning but not quite a touchdown.
In Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Hurts’ motivational picture book, a youngster rebounds from disappointment.
As Jalen heads off on his first day of school, he daydreams about joining the football team, but his friend Trey soon breaks the bad news. The garden club needed more space for vegetables, so the football field was used for planting. There will be no football this year. Jalen is despondent, but his teachers Mrs. Lee and Mr. Barry and bodega owner Mr. Muhammad offer guidance that spurs him and his friends into positive action. They work to flip a nearby empty lot into a football field, with Jalen echoing his mentors’ adages. Once the field is complete, Jalen feels a swell of pride in his and his friends’ work. While the idea of kids working together to effect change is a laudable one, the bland, wordy storytelling won’t inspire young people or hold their attention. Tired, cliched inspirational comments peppered throughout often slow down the narrative, and many adult readers will find the premise—a school dropping a high-interest sports program in favor of a community garden—wildly unrealistic. Though the illustrations are colorful, with a Disney Junior charm, strange stylistic choices, such as signs with odd combinations of scribbles instead of letters, give them an unpolished look. Like Hurts, Jalen is Black; his community is diverse.
Earnest and well meaning but not quite a touchdown. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9798217040308
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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