A miniodyssey, familiar but elemental, and played out amid plenty of smiles and pop-ups.
An aquatic take on the ever-popular “Are you my mother?” plotline, weak in the natural-history department but fully cozy.
After Mama Frog lays her eggs in some “seaweed” she finds in her pond and goes off to find a lily pad for a home, five big-eyed tadpoles hatch and go in search of her. As they don’t know what she looks like, they accost Mama Duck, Mama Fish, Mama Crab and others. All of these mothers, rather than eat the tadpoles as many would do in real life, indulgently send them along with different descriptions of their real mama. Working with a palette of harmonious greens and grays, Hung crafts serene-looking pondscapes that open with tabs and lifted flaps into spacious, layered tableaux. When Mama Frog’s ribbits lead at last to a joyful meeting, her offspring’s first question is not, considering the storyline, the natural one about why they don’t look anything like her. Instead, they ask her to teach them her froggy song. She promises that once they do change to frogs, “we will sing ‘ribbit, ribbit’ together, all day and night!”
A miniodyssey, familiar but elemental, and played out amid plenty of smiles and pop-ups. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4197-0718-6
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end.
Something is preventing Owl from falling asleep.
Owl leans back against his white pillow and headboard. “Squeek!” says something underneath the bed. Owl’s never heard that sound before, so he fastens his pink bathrobe and answers the front door. Nobody. It must be the wind; back to bed. Bidding himself goodnight, he climbs into bed—and hears the noise again. Time after time, he pops out of bed seeking the squeaker. Is it in the cupboard? He empties the shelves. Under the floor? He pulls up his floorboards. As Owl’s actions ratchet up—he destroys the roof and smashes the walls, all in search of the squeak—so does his anxiety. Not until he hunkers down in bed under the night sky (his bed is now outdoors, because the house’s roof and walls are gone), frantically clutching his pillow, does he see what readers have seen all along: a small, gray mouse. In simple illustrations with black outlines, textured coloring, and foreshortened perspective, Pizzoli plays mischievously with mouse placement. Sometimes the mouse is behind Owl or just out of his sightline; other times, the mouse is on a solid, orange-colored page across the spread from Owl, which removes him from Owl’s scene in a rather postmodern manner. Is the mouse toying with Owl? Who knows?
A funny tale about stress and an ever upping ante, with a comforting end. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4847-1275-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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