A bevy of fairy-tale creatures descend on a newly minted and totally unprepared petsitter.
Young Bob, who wears a Peruvian hat and has freckled, light-brown skin, and his purple dog, Rex, live “on a nice neat hill, in a nice neat house, with neat roses.” But Bob and Rex are “very, very poor.” Since their neighborhood is overrun with pets, they decide to become petsitters. They advertise: “NO PET TOO BIG.” Mistake. With the morning comes their first customer, a little golden-haired, white girl who wants them to look after her baby bear. The bear is a complainer: someone’s been into his porridge, sat in his chair, and slept in his bed—but that’s Rex’s bed, which he breaks. “Ding Dong!” Jack’s goose needs tending, and so do the troll’s three billy goats. Mayhem ensues as Bob and Rex lose—or never gain—control over the lot when three pigs drop by to hand off “Our—um—puppy.” Or wolf, which huffs and puffs and “BLEW THE HOUSE DOWN!!!!” Bob is now homeless as well as poor. He keeps his cool, for he still has the beans. “ ‘I’ll be a gardener!’…What could possibly go wrong?” Corderoy’s thin narrative rests on an appreciation of upside-down slapstick and a knowledge of the tales, and it is fully fueled by the rumbustious illustrations.
The story cries out for an overpowered reading, which is as likely to provoke a brawl as laughter. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68010-064-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS
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Echoes of Runaway Bunny color this exchange between a bath-averse piglet and his patient mother. Using a strategy that would probably be a nonstarter in real life, the mother deflects her stubborn offspring’s string of bath-free occupational conceits with appeals to reason: “Pirates NEVER EVER take baths!” “Pirates don’t get seasick either. But you do.” “Yeesh. I’m an astronaut, okay?” “Well, it is hard to bathe in zero gravity. It’s hard to poop and pee in zero gravity too!” And so on, until Mom’s enticing promise of treasure in the deep sea persuades her little Treasure Hunter to take a dive. Chunky figures surrounded by lots of bright white space in Segal’s minimally detailed watercolors keep the visuals as simple as the plotline. The language isn’t quite as basic, though, and as it rendered entirely in dialogue—Mother Pig’s lines are italicized—adult readers will have to work hard at their vocal characterizations for it to make any sense. Moreover, younger audiences (any audiences, come to that) may wonder what the piggy’s watery closing “EUREKA!!!” is all about too. Not particularly persuasive, but this might coax a few young porkers to get their trotters into the tub. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25425-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2011
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING
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Even more alliterative hanky-panky from the creators of The Wonky Donkey (2010).
Operating on the principle (valid, here) that anything worth doing is worth overdoing, Smith and Cowley give their wildly popular Wonky Donkey a daughter—who, being “cute and small,” was a “dinky donkey”; having “beautiful long eyelashes” she was in consequence a “blinky dinky donkey”; and so on…and on…and on until the cumulative chorus sails past silly and ludicrous to irresistibly hysterical: “She was a stinky funky plinky-plonky winky-tinky,” etc. The repeating “Hee Haw!” chorus hardly suggests what any audience’s escalating response will be. In the illustrations the daughter sports her parent’s big, shiny eyes and winsome grin while posing in a multicolored mohawk next to a rustic boombox (“She was a punky blinky”), painting her hooves pink, crossing her rear legs to signal a need to pee (“winky-tinky inky-pinky”), demonstrating her smelliness with the help of a histrionic hummingbird, and finally cozying up to her proud, evidently single parent (there’s no sign of another) for a closing cuddle.
Should be packaged with an oxygen supply, as it will incontestably elicit uncontrollable gales of giggles. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-60083-4
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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