Should you read this terrific book? Of course!
Snail and Worm strike again, with another standout early reader.
In this latest installment of the series, Kügler delivers another bighearted trio of stories about two small friends. The controlled text is told through dialogue only, with careful text placement rather than speech tags indicating the speaker. As in previous titles, the characters’ expressions and posturing enhance the text’s gentle humor in the pals’ interactions, which often hinges on Snail’s naïveté. Achieving expressiveness with anthropomorphic invertebrate body language is an impressive feat, and Kügler’s deft use of simple dots and circles for eyes (or, in Snail’s case, eyestalks) seems akin to character illustrations by James Marshall and Jon Klassen. Characters’ simple faces display a range of emotions, from dismay to uncertainty, sadness, fear, and joy, as Worm helps Snail grapple with the ephemeral nature of a cloud and a dandelion gone to seed, and they both confront the feeling of being too small in a big world. The throughline of the book is reciprocal affection, which expands to include a new friend by book’s end when a turtle approaches Snail and Worm and asks to play with them.
Should you read this terrific book? Of course! (Early reader. 5-8)Pub Date: July 4, 2023
ISBN: 9780358521204
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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