July 1, 2024
Gr 2-4-A collection of mostly humorous short stories in verse offers a playful look at feelings. Comical cartoon black-and-white illustrations add whimsical details to silly situations, such as a claustrophobic alien encounter in "The Beebop Aliens and the Selfie Squish." Other highlights include "The Cupcake Temptation," which follows a girl's hilarious deliberation as she considers stealing her younger brother's treat. Text and illustration work well together in "A Hundred Years of Indecision," "The Band," and "Humdrum Dragon Blasts." Other poems lack child appeal, though, with awkward, forced rhymes and clumsy sentiments. In "Uniquey," a bear who doesn't fit in learns to love himself, inspiring others who "tried to be more themselves too." "The Best Egg Hunt" sinks under its heavy-handed message: A girl gives away her eggs and notes "the world contained giggles that were such a delight." Emergent readers looking for a fun approach to feelings should start with Mo Willems's The Frustrating Book or Mike Wohnoutka's Ups and Downs: A Book of Emotions. VERDICT With its good-humored approach and appealing illustrations reminiscent of Dr. Seuss, this uneven collection offers a few gems for sharing aloud, but ultimately falls short.-Marilyn Taniguchi
Copyright 2024 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 15, 2024
Lighthearted verses, many presented in graphic format, feature siblings, monsters, wild creatures, flights of fancy, and daring deeds. In breezy, loose-jointed rhymes, Taylor moves freely between quotidian and fantasy settings. A sibling's indignant rejection of a suggestion that little brother Max is "really slow" ("Others see what Max can't do / but I see what he can"), for instance, is followed by a ballad of a lad so indecisive that he spends 100 years in front of a vending machine and a teacher's gleeful revelation that she has hairy "monster feet." The titular theme, which extends to specific labels for many of the poems and a "Feeling Index" at the end, not only includes non-emotions such as "Peer Pressure," but also arbitrarily assigns just one feeling even to entries that contain several...and sometimes getting it wrong to boot. Still, in a mix of lavishly detailed sequential panels and enveloping single-page illustrations, Dorman catches all sorts of fantastical creatures, joining a large, racially diverse cast of children (including one young wheelchair user) in brisk action. Readers will find them all stimulating company--even a "humdrum" dragon bored with blasting castles who decides to take up a more peaceable hobby (knitting) and the Laziest Lady Ever: "But some people may argue my talent's a bore / since I've laid here so long my face stuck to the floor." Strains to fit what feels like a forcibly imposed theme but should nevertheless find fans.(Poetry. 9-11)
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