Steig is a master—if not the master—of turning on the endearment juices without getting sloppy about it. That’s because his artwork has just the right touch of the jughead to give the drollery an eccentric edge. Take away that marriage of word and art and you have, for instance, this book, a real cuddlefest, but not the kind of dance that steals your breath away. Steig’s strange world enwraps readers from the first sentence: “Arriving home one day, Toby’s father is surprised to see his son lying facedown by the door.” What gives? Toby’s pretending to be a doormat. Each two-page spread thereafter finds Toby striking some curious pose and asking his parents to guess what he is. A turnip? No, a bag of dirty laundry. A fish trapped in a net? Nope, a plate of spaghetti. A knot? Wrong again, a pair of scissors. Toby and his parents are weasels with great dewy eyes, drawn with a soft dreaminess, so that their being winsome in the extreme is a foregone conclusion. They’re also not a touch vapid. While this follow-up to Toby, Where Are You? (1997) has doubtless appeal, this one isn’t as clever as the first and the longevity of that appeal is not so indubitable. (Picture book. 2-5)
Pub Date: May 31, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-205169-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
It’s nothing new, but it’s also clearly heartfelt.
A love song from parents to their child.
This title will seem quite similar to the many others about parents’ deep love for their children. The text is wholly composed of first-person declarations of parental love, and it’s juxtaposed with illustrations of the child with one or both parents. It’s not always clear who the “I” speaking is, and there are a few pages that instead use “we.” Most sentences begin with “I love you more” phrasing to communicate that nothing could undermine parental love: “I love you more than all the sleepless nights…and all the early, tired mornings.” The accompanying pictures depict the child as a baby with weary parents. Later spreads show the child growing up, and the phrasing shifts away from the challenges of parenting to its joys and to attempts to quantify love: “I love you more than all the blades of grass at the park…and all the soccer that we played.” Throughout, Bell’s illustrations use pastel tones and soft visual texture to depict cozy, wholesome scenes that are largely redundant of the straightforward, warm text. They feature a brown-haired family with a mother, father, and child, who all appear to be white (though the father has skin that’s a shade darker than the others’).
It’s nothing new, but it’s also clearly heartfelt. (Picture book. 2-4)Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4998-0652-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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