PLB 0-06-027164-7 Joyce (The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs, 1996, etc.) plays with circles, curls, and curves the way a writer plays with language, creating a visually dazzling story about the everyday capers of a family of round Rolie Polies. Rolie Polie Olie is a toy of a boy, an electro-comic character from a futuristic, alien planet “way up high in the Rolie Polie sky.” In the morning he rolls out of bed, brushes his teeth, and recharges his head. At breakfast he dances the Rolie Polie Rumba dance in underpants, then rides aboard the hip-hop mop to wash his teapot house from tip to top. With a rhyme that would be strained in less sure hands, Joyce takes Olie through a hip-hip-hooray day of play and into bedtime, landing Olie in “a bunch of trouble” until he is “Rolie Polie sad” and misses the nightly kiss on his Rolie Polie head. Computer-generated, digitized backgrounds lend an SF atmosphere to every scene, while the flamboyant colors work in concert to create—appropriately, given the character’s origins—an effect of suspended animation. An eccentric blend of the cinematic and familial that is coming to be known as vintage Joyce. (Picture book. 2-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-027163-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
PLB 0-517-70967-8 Me And My Family Tree (32 pp.; $13.00; PLB $14.99; May; 0-517-70966-X; PLB 0-517-70967-8): For children who are naturally curious about the people who care for them (most make inquiries into family relationships at an early age), Sweeney explains, with the assistance of a young narrator, the concept of a family tree. Photographs become understandable once the young girl learns the relationships among family members; she wonders what her own family tree will look like when she marries and has children. A larger message comes at the end of this story: not only does she have a family tree, but so does everyone in the world. Cable’s drawings clearly define the process of creating a family tree; she provides a blank tree so children can start on their own geneaology.(Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-517-70966-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
One of a four-book series designed to help the very young prepare for new siblings, this title presents a toddler-and-mother pair (the latter heavily pregnant) as they read about new babies, sort hand-me-downs, buy new toys, visit the obstetrician and the sonographer, speculate and wait. Throughout, the child asks questions and makes exclamations with complete enthusiasm: “How big is the baby? What does it eat? I felt it move! Is it a boy or girl?” Fuller’s jolly pictures present a biracial family that thoroughly enjoys every moment together. It’s a bit oversimplified, but no one can complain about the positive message it conveys, appropriately, to its baby and toddler audience. The other titles in the New Baby series are My New Baby (ISBN: 978-1-84643-276-7), Look at Me! (ISBN: 978-1-84643-278-1) and You and Me (ISBN: 978-1-84643-277-4). (Board book. 18 mos.-3)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84643-275-0
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Child's Play
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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