A quirky, funny tale with an unsurprising but satisfying ending that involves the couch.
A French bulldog named Vinny tries to get his first job, with humorous results.
Vinny lives in a big-city row house with his owner, a young white woman he calls Mom, and his “adopted brother,” a cat called Lester. The cat explains that Mom is gone all day at her job, so Vinny decides to get a job too. He puts on his best clothes, dressing in a bow tie, red plaid jacket, trousers, and a hat, so he has the look of a properly dressed—if very short—gentleman. Vinny finds three jobs in all: cleaning tables at a restaurant, watering plants at a flower shop, and guarding a dinosaur skeleton in a museum. Each job is misinterpreted, Amelia Bedelia–fashion, as Vinny slurps up leftovers at the restaurant, lifts his leg on the flower pots, and runs off with the dinosaur’s leg bone before he finally finds his métier. The silly but funny story requires willing suspension of disbelief regarding Vinny’s prior knowledge, wardrobe, access to the city, and ease in acquiring employment, but it reads as a believably humorous fantasy. Illustrations with a retro vibe use pastel backgrounds that set off Vinny’s bold, plaid coat. Two wordless, double-page spreads show a circular map of Vinny’s neighborhood with all the locations the dog visits. The human characters include people of different racial presentations and ages.
A quirky, funny tale with an unsurprising but satisfying ending that involves the couch. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 26, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1356-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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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