Sloat continues exploring the theme of her previous work, Hark! The Aardvark Angels Sing: A Story of Christmas Mail (2001) with this rhyming story focusing on imaginary postage stamps from cities and countries around the world. The premise is that after Christmas, Santa calls the North Wind to blow all the children’s letters away, and “pieces of Christmas come swirling down” like snow. The tiny torn bits of letters drift down on double-page spreads that include a large image of a postage stamp, most featuring animals, on one page and four lines of rhyming text on the facing page. The rhymes sometimes focus on the animals and sometimes on the country, but the intent is often unclear and the rhyme schemes are variable and often don’t scan well. Some of the stamps are misleading (the Russian stamp says “Russian Christmas” in English, for example), and the rhyme for the US is downright confusing. It shows three possums hanging from their tales in front of the Capitol with the rhyme stating, “On Pennsylvania Avenue, / Possums pray for me and you— / ‘Please bless this world, and bless this town, / And those whose lives are upside down.’ ” Sloat’s imaginary postage stamps are attractive images, but the title, concept, and connection with Santa never coalesce into a real story. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-6355-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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The wriggly narrator of Diary of a Worm (2003) puts in occasional appearances, but it’s his arachnid buddy who takes center stage here, with terse, tongue-in-cheek comments on his likes (his close friend Fly, Charlotte’s Web), his dislikes (vacuums, people with big feet), nervous encounters with a huge Daddy Longlegs, his extended family—which includes a Grandpa more than willing to share hard-won wisdom (The secret to a long, happy life: “Never fall asleep in a shoe.”)—and mishaps both at spider school and on the human playground. Bliss endows his garden-dwellers with faces and the odd hat or other accessory, and creates cozy webs or burrows colorfully decorated with corks, scraps, plastic toys and other human detritus. Spider closes with the notion that we could all get along, “just like me and Fly,” if we but got to know one another. Once again, brilliantly hilarious. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-000153-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Joanna Cotler/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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