Children will gobble this one up and ask for more.
It’s always a rollicking adventure when a food item bounds out the door.
As this Dutch import opens, a family comprised of a grandmother, a father, and seven children are getting ready for breakfast. When Dad pours the pancake batter into the sizzling pan, each child vies to get the first one, until the youngest tot whispers, “Can I eat it, dear, kind, clever, sweet, funny, lovely, handsome Dad?” Dad laughs. But when the pancake is flipped, it bounces out the door. “Ha! No one’s going to eat me,” it calls out. “I’m far too fast. Catch me if you can!” Thus begins the chase. As the pancake speeds past a series of animals—among them a rooster, a fox, a badger, and a duck—all dash after the tasty treat. But a clever wild boar gets the last laugh (and the last gulp). Like the classic tale “The Gingerbread Man,” this cumulative story relies on repetition and rhythm, with the boastful titular foodstuff listing all the creatures pursuing it: “Seven hungry children, a rooster and a fox couldn’t eat me—I’m far too fast.” Bright, cheery patterns adorn the indoor scenes; once the chase moves outside, the landscape transforms from autumn crispness to shadowy woods, heightening the drama. A recipe for “deliciously crispy pancakes” is appended. Members of the family vary in skin tone.
Children will gobble this one up and ask for more. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 8, 2025
ISBN: 9781782509318
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Floris
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
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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