The fun of this one is in the manipulative elements, even if they don’t make the book wow.
An interactive board book about farm animals with sliding tabs.
Deneux deploys his usual simple, bold, labeled illustrations with an eye to palette and a play on color. This board book uses only three colors—orange, black, and white—which may strike some as odd given the illustrations include a pig and a donkey. Readers are invited to slide a tab with a die-cut circle for a fingertip either up and down or back and forth in order to alter details on the animal: An eye opens, a beak turns orange, hooves appear. The illustrations are certainly fun to look at, and the sliding feature is inviting and compelling (even adults will want to try it out). What’s puzzling, though, is the purpose of the sliding, aside from perhaps engaging little readers’ fine-motor skills. What changes about each animal seems arbitrary, sometimes altering them from a single, solid black-on-white or white-on-black silhouette to a figure with some details; others simply add or subtract details. On one page, the chicks disappear and reappear altogether, the only such animal to do that in the book. Thus the book doesn’t seem to be about a play on outlines and shapes, or a play on disappearing and reappearing, or really any one thing except an amusing little gimmick that activates colors and patterns.
The fun of this one is in the manipulative elements, even if they don’t make the book wow. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 979-1-02760-604-7
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Twirl/Chronicle
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2019
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character.
One of Boynton's signature characters celebrates Halloween.
It's Halloween time, and Pookie the pig is delighted. Mom helps the little porker pick out the perfect Halloween costume, a process that spans the entire board book. Using an abcb rhyme scheme, Boynton dresses Pookie in a series of cheerful costumes, including a dragon, a bunny, and even a caped superhero. Pookie eventually settles on the holiday classic, a ghost, by way of a bedsheet. Boynton sprinkles in amusing asides to her stanzas as Pookie offers costume commentary ("It's itchy"; "It's hot"; "I feel silly"). Little readers will enjoy the notion of transforming themselves with their own Halloween costumes while reading this book, and a few parents may get some ideas as well. Boynton's clean, sharp illustrations are as good as ever. This is Pookie's first holiday title, but readers will surely welcome more.
A pleasant holiday spent with a perfectly charming character. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-553-51233-5
Page Count: 18
Publisher: Robin Corey/Random
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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