A book written for new readers seems more like fare for the toddler set.
The unnamed protagonist is a boy who resists his stern mother’s titular directive that he go to bed. Pictures depict her exasperation as she drags him down the hallway and then as she tries to get him out from under his bed. In a very abrupt mood shift on the facing page, she is then pictured sitting and smiling while reading aloud from a chair beside his bed. Playful colored pencil–and-graphite illustrations are anything but sleepy, and their busyness may prove overwhelming for emergent readers attempting to decode text. Furthermore, while the words themselves are simple enough to inspire confidence and independence, the bedtime-angst theme seems better suited to a younger audience. This concern is only somewhat mitigated when the art takes a fantastic turn, sending the boy and his teddy bear flying off on an adventure, as this part of the story is rather disjointed. They sail in a bed that has become like a boat and then encounter alien children who are also resisting bedtime. Then, the boy and teddy bear recognize the moon children’s bed as their own, and they seize it and take it back home. Their appetite for fun satiated, they then decide to go to sleep, too.
A mixed bag of a book. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: March 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8234-2938-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Captain Underpants he ain’t.
Although some may initially associate Harper and Shea’s beginning reader with Pilkey’s popular series, it falls short with a thin story and none of the master's clever sense of subversive, ribald humor. The titular hero starts as Veggiebaby, then becomes Veggieboy, then Veggieman, his growth and development attributed to his love of vegetables. He practices his superpowers as he grows, with text and art taking cheap shots at elderly women (as he lifts “a bus filled with chattering grandmas”) and overweight people (as his X-ray vision enables him to see into a house where a rotund man stands, embarrassed and clad only in his underwear: “Some things are better not seen.”) The book ends with Veggieman getting a new name from children who see a stick stuck to his shirt, making the V into a W, and dub him Wedgieman. “We don’t care about spelling,” they assure him when he objects that the word “wedgie” has a “d” and not a double “g.” His new name is sealed when (in an odd turn of events that is, sadly, characteristic of the poorly executed text) he gives himself a wedgie.
In what seems like a veritable golden age of beginning readers, perhaps some things are better not published. Or read. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-93071-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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In this Japanese import, the first in a long-running series to appear in English, two girls ride bikes through a forest—with stops for clover-blossom tea and jam sandwiches.
It’s such a benign wood that Chirri and Chirra—depicted as a prim pair of identical twins with straight bob cuts—think nothing of sharing both a lunch spot and a nap beneath a tree with a bear and a rabbit. Moreover, at convenient spots along the way there is a forest cafe with a fox waiter plus “tables and chairs of all different size” to accommodate the diverse forest clientele, a bakery offering “bread in all different shapes and jam in all different colors,” and, just as the sun goes down, a forest hotel with similarly diverse keys and doors. That night a forest concert draws the girls and the hotel’s animal guests to their balconies to join in: “La-la-la, La-la-la. What a wonderful night in the forest!” Despite heavy doses of cute, the episode is saved from utter sappiness by the inclusive spirit of the forest stops and the delightfully unforced way that the girls offer greetings to a pair of honeybees at a tiny adjacent table in the cafe, show no anxiety at the spider dangling above their napping place, and generally accept their harmonious sylvan world as a safe and friendly place. Doi creates her illustrations with colored pencil, pastel, and crayon, crafting them to look like mid-20th-century lithographs.
A serene, feel-good outing with a cozy, old-fashioned feel. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59270-199-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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