Nothing like a little body shaming to shape young readers’ career expectations.
An armored, lumbering ex-pirate cheerfully goes over the many reasons why he was “just fired.”
Like other failed job seekers in the Dinosaur Daydreams series, Gary Stego is seen—with prodigious lack of sensitivity—to be unsuited in several ways, largely physical, for his chosen occupation. Beginning with the fact that pirate gear and clothing (including, as the cartoon pictures make clear, underwear) don’t come in his size, he tallies his multiple failures. These include a clumsy spiked tail that leaves the sails in shreds, a mistaken notion of what the “poop deck” is, and an arithmetical inability to count looted coins. Moreover, his preference for salads over salt beef openly disgusts the racially mixed lot of children (mostly) that makes up the rest of the piratical crew in Calvert’s cartoon illustrations. Despite a “Pirate Glossary,” Troupe isn’t much for nautical language (Gary: “No matter where I stood, the ship nearly tipped over”), but he does identify the stego’s spiked tail as a thagomizer, and at the end he slips in some additional dino facts to go with a more conventional portrait of one of Gary’s prehistoric ancestors. What’s next for Gary? How about…brain surgeon? “After all, how hard could it be?”
Nothing like a little body shaming to shape young readers’ career expectations. (review and discussion questions) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5158-2133-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so...
A pro bono Twinkie of a book invites readers to fly off in a magic plane to bring clean water to our planet’s oceans, deserts, and brown children.
Following a confusingly phrased suggestion beneath a soft-focus world map to “touch the Earth. Now touch where you live,” a shake of the volume transforms it into a plane with eyes and feathered wings that flies with the press of a flat, gray “button” painted onto the page. Pressing like buttons along the journey releases a gush of fresh water from the ground—and later, illogically, provides a filtration device that changes water “from yucky to clean”—for thirsty groups of smiling, brown-skinned people. At other stops, a tap on the button will “help irrigate the desert,” and touching floating bottles and other debris in the ocean supposedly makes it all disappear so the fish can return. The 20 children Coh places on a globe toward the end are varied of skin tone, but three of the four young saviors she plants in the flier’s cockpit as audience stand-ins are white. The closing poem isn’t so openly parochial, though it seldom rises above vague feel-good sentiments: “Love the Earth, the moon and sun. / All the children can be one.”
“It’s time to head back home,” the narrator concludes. “You’ve touched the Earth in so many ways.” Who knew it would be so easy to clean the place up and give everyone a drink? (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5107-2083-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sky Pony Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Sturdy split pages allow readers to create their own inventive combinations from among a handful of prehistoric critters. Hard on the heels of Flip-O-Saurus (2010) drops this companion gallery, printed on durable boards and offering opportunities to mix and match body thirds of eight prehistoric mammals, plus a fish and a bird, to create such portmanteau creatures as a “Gas-Lo-Therium,” or a “Mega-Tor-Don.” The “Mam-Nyc-Nia” places the head of a mammoth next to the wings and torso of an Icaronycteris (prehistoric bat) and the hind legs of a Macrauchenia (a llamalike creature with a short trunk), to amusing effect. Drehsen adds first-person captions on the versos, which will also mix and match to produce chuckles: “Do you like my nose? It’s actually a short trunk…” “I may remind you of an ostrich, because my wings aren’t built for flying…” “My tail looks like a dolphin’s.” With but ten layers to flip, young paleontologists will run through most of the permutations in just a few minutes, but Ball’s precisely detailed ink-and-watercolor portraits of each animal formally posed against plain cream colored backdrops may provide a slightly more enduring draw. A silhouette key on the front pastedown includes a pronunciation guide and indicates scale. Overall, a pleasing complement to more substantive treatments. (Novelty nonfiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1099-9
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Abbeville Kids
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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