Happy birthday to a splendid book for new birthday boys and girls.
Scanlon delivers a sweet, rhyming text to tell the story of a little bunny’s birthday in Graegin’s debut picture book.
The succinct phrasing from page to page marks this as a text for very young children just learning about birthdays and birthday parties. The text takes a natural question-and-answer format as the birthday girl asks about each activity, and her mother offers loving replies. Scenes devoted to getting dressed up, greeting guests, celebrating with music and play, blowing out birthday-cake candles, opening gifts, taking pictures and looking back at past years provide an overview of the festivities. Perhaps taking a cue from the closing line’s reference to the girl as “sweet honey bun,” Graegin casts the unnamed central characters as a family of anthropomorphic bunnies, introducing a veritable peaceable kingdom of relatives and friends who come to celebrate on the special day. Graegin’s illustrations employ pencil-and-ink washes that are then digitally assembled and colored, and they mark her as an up-and-coming artist to watch, as they evoke a style akin to that of Peter McCarty, Laura McGee Kvasnosky and Polly Dunbar.
Happy birthday to a splendid book for new birthday boys and girls. (Picture book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0287-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
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