With help from a hippo and an accident-prone little sister, a child explains library rules in this bubbly debut from Meng. A sequence of linked events begins with an attack of hiccups, which, the narrator notes, makes people laugh—particularly in quiet places like the library. Hiccups can be cured by big surprises, such as finding a hippo in the tree outside the library—and hippos are good for transportation home, along with other things. And best of all, returning a stack of finished books that have been thrown, dropped, used as plates for ice cream, swallowed by a hippo and then vomited up (treatment that many actual library items evidently receive, as any public-library worker will attest) on time earns the reward of a library card. Pedersen’s lighthearted cartoons feature a big hippo, two expressively posed young patrons and a staid-looking librarian with the inner stuff to climb a ladder to the roof when, for instance, a little sister has to be rescued. Faintly reminiscent of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, this introduction doesn’t exactly model best practices, but it does state them in ways that children will laughingly absorb. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 21, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-59544-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
At her best, Rylant’s (The Ticky-Tacky Doll, below, etc.) sweetness and sentiment fills the heart; in this outing, however, sentimentality reigns and the end result is pretty gooey. Pandora keeps a lighthouse: her destiny is to protect ships at sea. She’s lonely, but loves her work. She rescues Seabold and heals his broken leg, and he stays on to mend his shipwrecked boat. This wouldn’t be so bad but Pandora’s a cat and Seabold a dog, although they are anthropomorphized to the max. Then the duo rescue three siblings—mice!—and make a family together, although Rylant is careful to note that Pandora and Seabold each have their own room. Choosing what you love, caring for others, making a family out of love, it is all very well, but this capsizes into silliness. Formatted to look like the start of a new series. Oh, dear. (Fiction. 6-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-689-84880-3
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
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