An eyeful of lively characters gives this counting book plenty of vim, as do Goldstone’s (The Beastly Feast, 1998) choices of words. “If you could ask 10 friends to tea, tell me who your friends would be.” Then, sequentially, he adds two numbers together to make ten, then three numbers to make ten, then four, and so on, from a simple “If you ask 8 trusty tailors, they could come with 2 proud plumbers,” to the more brain-baking “How about 1 prince, 1 painter, and 2 otters, 1 diner, 1 miner, 1 major, and 3 otters.” There are scuba divers, chauffeurs, quilters, ballerinas, and ventriloquists, all mixing and matching. Cahoon’s (Word Play ABC, 1999) computer art turns the shepherds into geese, the chauffeurs into hippos, and the drummers into octopuses, adding another layer of humor. Busy pages compensate for flat color and figures, which somehow seem right. Goldstone’s rhyme is often spread over two pages, so it can be difficult to get the syncopation right, but the fun here is in the counting more than the verse. At the end, Goldstone and Cahoon gather all their characters together in a great tea party of 100, and on the last page, a note demonstrates all the ways to add up to ten using different sets of numbers. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6249-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2001
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This charming, colorful counting tale of ten little fish runs full-circle. Although the light verse opens and closes with ten fish swimming in a line, page-by-page the line grows shorter as the number of fish diminishes one-by-one. One fish dives down, one gets lost, one hides, and another takes a nap until a single fish remains. Then along comes another fish to form a couple and suddenly a new family of little fish emerges to begin all over. Slick, digitally-created images of brilliant marine flora and fauna give an illusion of underwater depth and silence enhancing the verse’s numerical and theatrical progression. The holistic story bubbles with life’s endless cycle. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63569-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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