Some songs don’t make good books. This is one of them.
A little girl has a goldfish named Sal, who gives her special kisses.
The book opens with endpapers filled with bubbles and musical notes and concludes with endpapers that add sea horses, sax-playing turtles, a brown-skinned mermaid (who might resemble the book’s celebrity author), and the brown-skinned protagonist-as-mermaid, dancing with Sal. Wearing her hair in a big, maroon afro puff, the child takes Sal everywhere and is rewarded with Sal’s “bub-bub-bub-bub-bubble kiss[es].” Williams’ verse can best be described as pedestrian: “She can’t roar like a lion, bark like a dog, / scratch like a cat, or jump like a frog, // run like a deer, or do a hummingbird hover. / But here’s the reason that I really love her.” In the realistic parts of the story, the girl wears pants and a shirt, but in the fantasy scenes, she has a mermaid’s tail and she and Sal meet merpeople. In the colorful but generic illustrations, both adult and child merpeople have varying-colored skin and tails, but with identically shaped eyes and facial features, this offers only a veneer of racial diversity. The ending paints the underwater portion as a dream. Ironically, despite the monotonous refrain about bubble kisses, Whitaker never illustrates the fish and girl smooching, which raises the question: What, exactly, are bubble kisses? Though unavailable for review, a music CD of the song accompanies this book.
Some songs don’t make good books. This is one of them. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3834-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it.
What happens when a robot washes up alone on an island?
“Everything was just right on the island.” Brown beautifully re-creates the first days of Roz, the protagonist of his Wild Robot novels, as she adapts to living in the natural world. A storm-tossed ship, seen in the opening just before the title page, and a packing crate are the only other human-made objects to appear in this close-up look at the robot and her new home. Roz emerges from the crate, and her first thought as she sets off up a grassy hill—”This must be where I belong”—is sweetly glorious, a note of recognition rather than conquest. Roz learns to move, hide, and communicate like the creatures she meets. When she discovers an orphaned egg—and the gosling Brightbill, who eventually hatches—her decision to be his mother seems a natural extension of her adaptation. Once he flies south for the winter, her quiet wait across seasons for his return is a poignant portrayal of separation and change. Brown’s clean, precise lines and deep, light-filled colors offer a sense of what Roz might be seeing, suggesting a place that is alive yet deeply serene and radiant. Though the book stands alone, it adds an immensely appealing dimension to Roz’s world. Round thumbnails offer charming peeks into the island world, depicting Roz’s animal neighbors and Brightbill’s maturation.
A hymn to the intrinsic loveliness of the wild and the possibility of sharing it. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780316669467
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
No laugh track required: This story should generate genuine giggles.
Saturday Night Live mainstay Thompson makes his picture-book debut with the tale of a young rabbit who discovers that being the class clown is harder than it looks.
To make a splash on his first day of school, Bunny decides to adopt a new persona: Funny Bunny. He performs his act for his classmates, who are a tough audience…or is the material the problem? (Sample joke: “What town does milk come from? Milk-waukee!”) Actually, Bunny wins over one classmate: Hedgehog thinks Bunny has comedy chops and just needs practice. This gives Bunny an idea: Why don’t they work together? (Thompson’s co-author knows something about collaborating on jokes: Tucker has been an SNL writer for two decades.) Bunny and Hedgehog’s writing sessions are fruitful, and when Bunny tries out his new material on his classmates, he brings down the house. Clearly, teamwork and persistence pay off in this silly yet heartening tale, although laughs aren’t Bunny’s only reward. In Hedgehog he has found a friend (and, from the looks of things, perhaps a manager). The book’s jokes, including two pages’ worth that conclude the story, will be manna for punsters, who presumably aren’t supposed to notice that there’s no qualitative difference between the jokes that amused Bunny’s class and the ones that bombed. Neal’s appealing digital art focuses heavily on reaction shots from an all-animal cast living in a world of amusement park colors.
No laugh track required: This story should generate genuine giggles. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781250364814
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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