For settings that can’t get enough of farm-animal board books
Yet another board book designed to introduce farm animals to young children.
The twist in this offering, a follow-up to Night-Night Forest Friends (2013), is that initially the animals are asleep. Readers meet them as the sun rises over idyllic farm scenes rendered digitally in ink and paint. The first spread is quite dark, with a haloed sun that goes from beige to deep purple as the concentric arcs move up the page. A dark red barn sits on a hill above gray-green rolling meadows. Subsequent pages employ the same muted palette in ever lighter shades. Each spread features a standard farm animal: ducks, dogs, sheep, pigs, cows, horses, with chickens and a cartoonish rooster occupying two spreads. The surprising addition of llamas on the fourth spread is apt as domesticated llamas become more common in North America. This must be a free-range farm; the second-to-last spread shows all the animals on both sides of a pasture fence. The final illustration mimics the opening spread, with the animals in the fields and a yellow sun in the sky. Rhyming text identifies each animal and hints at its habits, with some artistic license: How sheep would open a gate, as they are urged to do, is unclear. Although the wake-up motif is fairly fresh, it’s not enough to make this book top of the crop.
For settings that can’t get enough of farm-animal board books . (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: May 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-8624-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver.
The farmyard's chickens experience Halloween.
A round, full moon shines in the sky, and the chickens of Boynton's barnyard are feeling “nervous.” Pumpkins shine “with flickering eyes,” witches and wizards wander the pastures, and one chicken has seen “a mouse of enormous size.” It’s Halloween night, and readers will delight as the chickens huddle together and try to figure out what's going on. All ends well, of course, and in Boynton's trademark silly style. (It’s really quite remarkable how her ranks of white, yellow-beaked chickens evoke rows of candy corn.) At this point parents and children know what they're in for when they pick up a book by the prolific author, and she doesn't disappoint here. The chickens are silly, the pigs are cute, and the coloring and illustrations evoke a warmth that little ones wary of Halloween will appreciate. For children leery of the ghouls and goblins lurking in the holiday's iconography, this is a perfect antidote, emphasizing all the fun Halloween has to offer.
An excellent, rounded effort from a creator who knows how to deliver. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7611-9300-5
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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