Visit Happy County again for a year of fun.
Readers are invited back to the action-packed adventures found in Happy County in this fourth installment of the series. These titles are designed for readers who love spending hours poring over a book’s pages to spot all the wacky hijinks, and Long doesn’t disappoint with these hand-drawn, digitally tinted illustrations. The characters are a brightly colored menagerie of animal citizens waiting to usher readers into their lives. An octopus wearing a backpack and a red fez uses a crosswalk to get to school; a beaver struggles to keep up with the snow using ever larger tools; a hummingbird gardener explains pollination. Savvy caregivers will use the book’s colorful style and open-ended questions to engage their kiddos by turning this title into a multiuse tool to encourage conversation, deductive reasoning, and vocabulary building. The book bounces from topic to topic and activity to activity with a carefree brio that high-energy readers will enjoy. The range of spread design is diverse, including picture dictionary, seek-and-find, and comics panels. While some activities fall flat, there’s so much happening most readers will be amused and challenged. The seasonal approach is organizational rather than scientific, and the buoyant, Muppet-like energy will carry readers through all four of them. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Zany fun well worth repeat reads. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-76599-4
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A frog tries to do everything a goat does, too.
Goat asks Frog to look at them before declaring “I’m ON it!” while balancing atop a tree stump near a pond. After an “Oooh!” and a “You know what?” Frog leaps off their lily pad to balance on a rock: “I’m on it, too!” Goat grabs a prop so that they can be both “on it AND beside it.” (It may take young readers a little bit to realize there are two its.) So does Frog. The competition continues as Frog struggles to mimic overconfident Goat’s antics. In addition to on and beside, the pair adds inside, between, under, and more. Eventually, it all gets to be too much for Frog to handle, so Frog falls into the water, resumes position on the lily pad, and declares “I am OVER it” while eating a fly. In an act of solidarity, Goat jumps in, too. In Tsurumi’s first foray into early readers she pares down her energetic, colorful cartoon style to the bare essentials without losing any of the madcap fun. Using fewer than 80 repeated words (over 12 of which are prepositions), the clever text instructs, delights, and revels in its own playfulness. Color-coded speech bubbles (orange for Goat, green for Frog) help match the dialogue with each speaker. Like others in the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading series, Elephant and Piggie metafictively bookend the main narrative with hilariously on-the-nose commentary.
Whether in hand or on shelf, this one’s sure to make a splash anywhere and everywhere. (Early reader. 4-8)Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-368-06696-9
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A class visits the pumpkin patch, giving readers a chance to count down from 20.
At the farm, Farmer Mixenmatch gives them the tour, which includes a petting zoo, an educational area, a corn maze and a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. Holub’s text cleverly though not always successfully rhymes each child’s name within the line: “ ‘Eighteen kids get on our bus,’ says Russ. / ‘But someone’s late,’ says Kate. / ‘Wait for me!’ calls Kiri.” Pumpkins at the tops of pages contain the numerals that match the text, allowing readers to pair them with the orange-colored, spelled-out numbers. Some of the objects proffered to count are a bit of a stretch—“Guess sixteen things we’ll see,” count 14 cars that arrived at the farm before the bus—but Smith’s artwork keeps things easy to count, except for a challenging page that asks readers to search for 17 orange items (answers are at the bottom, upside down). Strangely, Holub includes one page with nothing to count—a sign marks “15 Pumpkin Street.” Charming, multicultural round-faced characters and lots of detail encourage readers to go back through the book scouring pages for the 16 things the kids guessed they might see. Endpapers featuring a smattering of pumpkin facts round out the text.
Between its autumn and field-trip themes and the fact that not many books start countdowns from 20, this may find its way to many library shelves. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8075-6660-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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