A cozy tale of pals weathering more than the weather.
Bear tries to jump-start Mouse’s happiness amid seasonal changes.
Bear awaits the usual “tap tap tapping” on his door, signaling a visit from “small and gray and bright-eyed” Mouse. Today the two of them will be going on a picnic. When Mouse runs late, Bear decides, “I will wait five minutes and then….” Becker’s sly text continues: “Bear didn’t really know what would happen then, but he liked the grumbly sound of it.” Worried, Bear sets out to meet Mouse. A fall wind blows away a pickle from Bear’s picnic basket: Has Mouse met a similar fate? Bear soon finds Mouse slumped on a tree stump, sad because so many things—the birds, the flowers—are leaving now that autumn is here. Bear tries to rally his friend with picnic food, even halving the remaining pickle, to no avail. If readers haven’t already been giggling at Mouse’s melodramatic poses, they will laugh aloud when Bear pretends to be the Autumn Fairy and begins to dance. As rain falls, Bear starts to share Mouse’s melancholy, vowing to head home and be sad by the fire. Denton’s greatly entertaining art shows Bear enduring a spectacular tumble into the mud. Mouse tries to stifle a laugh, and Bear bellows, “IT’S NOT FUNNY” as the friends navigate the trickiness of schadenfreude. The latest in this series is expectedly warm (and dry).
A cozy tale of pals weathering more than the weather. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781536229493
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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