A juicy, entertaining charmer.
There’s nothing friends can’t accomplish together.
Chicken pals Pipo, Bud, and Kenny create ingenious playthings from found objects: A box becomes a pirate ship; a bag becomes a kite. Above all, they love being together. One day, they find half a watermelon. While Bud and Kenny immediately start devouring the succulent fruit, Pipo is more interested in the nearby earthworm whose head temptingly rises aboveground. But, as hard as Pipo pulls, he can’t dislodge it. Finally, Pipo uses a fishing rod to yank it out: success! Except…this worm’s no worm. Pipo’s actually extracted a bootlace attached to a huge boot, which turns out to be a jolly plaything. (Sharp-eyed readers will spot something very interesting peering from the boot’s hole.) Meanwhile, Bud and Kenny have been closely observing Pipo’s activities from the now-empty watermelon rind, to which they’ve added inventive touches. The friends, realizing they miss each other on this hot day, reunite and, pulling out their most creative (and wettest) stops, devise their best project yet—“something the whole neighborhood could enjoy.” Originally published in the Czech Republic, this joyous romp about friendship and cooperation is a comic delight. Kids will savor both the narrative and the winning illustrations and the endearing, adorable characters; they’ll also marvel that the friends’ found objects seem always to be readily handy.
A juicy, entertaining charmer. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9788000070841
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Albatros Media
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Why not? Fun, cheery, and entertaining: just the ticket for the perennially inquisitive—or perpetually bored.
In this follow-up to The Magical Yet (2020), a child finds an antidote to apathy.
Talk about ennui! The red-spectacled, brown-skinned, dark-haired young protagonist is listless and bored. The little one has tried everything: the computer, toys…YAWN! But as the rhyming narration bounces along at a sprightly clip, a visitor arrives at the door. It’s the Curious Why, who resembles a flowery, leafy artichoke. The Curious Why ushers the child along on an inspirational path to great fun and tremendous learning. “You’re only bored if you choose to be,” says the Curious Why. There’s an enormous world out there just waiting to be explored by anyone who’s willing to be a “knowledge-collector” and a “gotta-know creature.” In other words, kids should ask questions about everything going on in the world. Where does the Why go for answers to these queries? The library, of course! On the next spread, we see the protagonist reading a book atop a winged prehistoric creature while dinosaurs mill about in the background. Other kids explore their passions, too; one uses a telescope to study the stars, another bakes, and another learns about bees. DiTerlizzi offers youngsters an upbeat, sensible cure for a serious case of the blahs; it’s not necessarily guaranteed to work, but it’s definitely worth a try. Readers will love the colorful, energetic, swirling digital illustrations, especially those dinos. Background characters are diverse.
Why not? Fun, cheery, and entertaining: just the ticket for the perennially inquisitive—or perpetually bored. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780316500142
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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