This high-profile crossover will slide effortlessly onto the bestseller lists, but it’s not likely to win its creators many new adult fans—or any child ones. Showing a fine disregard for foolish consistencies like end words that actually rhyme consistently, Martin fashions surreal situations in 26 couplets, each paired to a literal illustration from Chast strewn with both her customary cast of homely, anxious figures and other words or items that feature the selected letter. Though some spreads have a certain verbal and visual bounce—in the art for “Pedro the puppy piled poop on his paws / And Papa dog published his photo because,” for instance, the peeved paternal parent brandishes a copy of “Popular Pooch,” as mama dog praises a parsnip pizza—more often the captions read like random words strung together. Furthermore, some of the image choices, such as the 107 (or so) hunchbacks in Henrietta’s hairdo, or the drunk wandering past David the dog-faced boy, skate to the edge of poor taste. A gallery of accented letters on the endpapers provides some added value, but not enough. Like Shirley and Milton Glaser’s The Alphazeds (2003), any resemblance to a title for tots is coincidental. (Picture book. Adult)
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-51662-4
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Flying Dolphin/Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2008
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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BOOK REVIEW
Little ones are taught their ABCs with Christmas iconography.
A CAT nibbles on a candy cane, and FOXES sing holiday carols, while LANTERNS glow and ORNAMENTS sparkle on festive trees. Christmas is in the air, and so are the letters of the alphabet. Each letter gets a corresponding Christmas illustration, charmingly colored and cozily composed. The easily read text beneath each picture forms rhyming couplets (“GEESE with gumdrops stacked up tall. / HOME is where we deck the halls”), with the key word set in all caps. The imagery mixes spiritual and secular icons side by side: there are baby JESUS, SANTA, the “Three kind KINGS,” and (a little mystifyingly) “UNICORNS donning underwear.” The warm color palette draws little readers in, and the illustrations have a gingerbread-cookie aesthetic, though there is no real attempt to include Christmas traditions such as luminaria from nondominant cultures. The picture that groups a stereotypical Eskimo, an igloo, and some penguins will madden many readers on both cultural and geographical fronts.
A sweet but standard-issue Christmas read. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7624-6125-7
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS
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A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
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Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS
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