A satisfying choice for picky readers.
Lunch dates get a little sweeter when two friends bring the art of compromise to their menus.
Kat (a blue feline) and Mouse (a darker blue rodent) are getting together for lunch. Kat has packed “the most delicious sandwich! It has BACON, LETTUCE, and TOMATO.” Kat dubs this feast “the BLT.” Mouse has brought a delectable meal, too. “Only the BEST food there is! CHEESE!” Over the next few days, the pair again meet to share mealtimes. Kat totes increasingly elaborate picnic setups and sandwiches, while Mouse packs a modest, star-speckled lunchbox of flavorful cheeses. Sensitive to Kat’s perception of this apparent monotony, Mouse worries: “Maybe I’m boring.” After a trial lunch apart proves “AWFUL” for Kat and makes Mouse’s blue cheese taste “bluer than usual,” the pair agree that their happy mix of habits makes for a healthy friendship. Brightly colored digital art with thick outlines frames the gentle-faced, cartoonish characters on visually clean backgrounds in a variety of page layouts; some pages are divided into graphic novel–esque panels. Beginning readers will find the minimal text helpful; it appears in a bold font within clearly attributed and color-coded speech bubbles (pink for Kat, green for Mouse). This cheery series starter shares the tender social-emotional lessons of similar titles starring animal pals, like Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie series or Ben Clanton’s Narwhal and Jelly tales.
A satisfying choice for picky readers. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781547612420
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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