Give this one a miss.
Joaquín and his mother are about to eat some freshly baked pan de muerto when a knock on the door interrupts them. A hungry-looking skeleton in a mariachi outfit is willing to exchange a song for a bite of their Day of the Dead bread.
After some misgivings, the boy and his mother sit back to enjoy the song—but they’ve forgotten the gaping door. Two more skeletons with accordions stroll in, then three guitarists, and soon the tabletop is covered with 15 performing skeletons eager for a taste of the special treat. When the satisfied skeletal guests wave goodbye, not a single crumb is left. Undaunted, Mom removes two more loaves from the oven and Joaquín quickly shuts the door. Garza’s Day of the Dead celebration needlessly bogs down once the quickly multiplying skeletons start appearing. The refrain, “just one itsy bitsy little bite,” is repeated three times (with slight variation) on each page and always is followed by Mom’s halfhearted rejoinder, “That sounds fair.” An additional distraction is the culturally incongruous substitution of Spanish flamenco dancers for Mexican folklórico dancers among the bony party crashers. De Vita’s stiff watercolor scenes are framed by colorful borders, and the English and Spanish texts are separated by a line of whimsical images. The effectiveness of this bilingual counting book is further marred by its failure to highlight numbers within the text and the absence of any corresponding numerals.
Give this one a miss. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55885-872-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Mildly amusing, but something of a one-trick pony.
In this tech-savvy parody of the contemporary classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, a hyperactive pet mouse named Applesauce goes off the deep end (literally) while mesmerized with his boy’s iPhone.
Like many a harried caregiver, the boy—who’s finalizing preparations for a special outing to the “wild animal amusement park” with Applesauce—gives the persistently pesky mouse his iPhone as a diversion. Big mistake! Applesauce’s glassy-eyed absorption with the device results in utter mayhem. Oblivious to the roller coaster, tempting junk food and exotic animals at the amusement park, the tap-tap-tapping mouse inadvertently frees the animals from their cages and walks off a cliff. Hitching a ride with some conveniently passing porpoises, he winds up on a “distant island.” The boy arrives to rescue Applesauce, and the pair camp overnight. With no outlets or charger for the dead phone, Applesauce undergoes brief but dramatic withdrawal symptoms, which end with a marshmallow roast. “Ann Droyd”—aka David Milgrim—adopts the original text’s conditional, “if / then” formula but doesn’t attempt its exquisitely circular structure. Cartoony illustrations employ flat blues, grays and greens contoured in black, with word bubbles for dialogue. As Applesauce and his boy stargaze, the mouse asks, “By the way, how’d we get here?”
Mildly amusing, but something of a one-trick pony. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-399-16926-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work.
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 25, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
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