Though perhaps not particularly amusing to children (or their parents) who have actually battled the little scalp-suckers, this bouncy-jouncy plaint at least attempts to put a comical spin on the experience. “I was scritcha-scratchin’ / while a batch-a bugs / was hatchin’, / yes, those cooties were / attachin’ to my head,” moans the red-haired young narrator. Unfortunately, everyone in her extended family has a remedy—from Gramma’s mayonnaise cure to Mama’s plastic wrap, from Gramps’s kerosene concoction to (at last) the dog’s tube of special shampoo. Above the cartoon scenes of bedraggled country characters stomping ferociously about, Booth runs a thin continuous strip showing little bugs parachuting down to a seemingly forested cranial landscape, hatching in droves in a “nit picknic area” and wading through various sorts of gloop. Closing with a view of a nit graveyard thick with tombstones bearing legends like “Here lies Itty-Bitty Nitty, Jr.”, this kneeslapper makes a suitable alternative where Miriam Moss’s Scritch Scratch (2001) has already been picked out. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-689-83898-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING
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A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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Isaac explains why he wears a mask and cape and sometimes has special needs.
Packaged between rainbow-striped endpapers, this purposeful monologue offers a mix of positive takes—“I’ve got special superpowers that make me slightly different from my brother and the other kids at school”—and coping strategies. Among these latter are looking at foreheads rather than directly at eyes, which makes him “feel scared,” and keeping personal comments “inside my head so that I don’t upset people.” In the big, simple illustrations, Walsh gives Isaac uniformly smiling pets and peers for company, and she shows him less than cheerful only once, when the buzzing of fluorescent lights “makes my ears really hurt.” At the end he explains that he has Asperger’s, “which is a kind of autism,” and closes by affirming that his brother understands him, “and now you do too!” That may be overstating the case, but Isaac comes off as less inscrutable than the children in Gail Watts’ Kevin Thinks (2012) or Davene Fahy and Carol Inouye’s Anthony Best (2013). That the book is aimed not at children on the spectrum but at their peers is made explicit in a jacket-flap note from the author, whose son has Asperger’s.
While simplistic, it’s a serviceable starter for discussions of spectrum disorders with younger neurotypical audiences. (URL list) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8121-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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