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PS
Illustrated by
Barry Blitt.
A big sister tells her brother everything he missed during his nap: bulldozer-driving, dinosaur fossils, pirates, space travel, and more. That her yarn is based on specific items in her brother's room--toy truck, dinosaur model, pirate book--adds insult to injury. The conversational text gets that teasing big-sisterly tone just right. The illustrations combine child-centered nonsense imagery with wicked humor adults will appreciate.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
November, 2014
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K-3
Illustrated by
Chris Appelhans.
A girl tries to teach her new pet sloth, Sparky, to play hide-and-seek, roll over, fetch: nothing. After a misguided pseudo-talent show, the girl accepts that, while Sparky is no whirling dervish, he is an endearing companion. Appelhans's striking watercolor and pencil illustrations, in a muted color palette of pinks, browns, and green-blues, do much of the story's heavy lifting.
Reviewer: Sam Bloom
| Horn Book Magazine Issue:
May, 2014
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K-3
Illustrated by
Nancy Carpenter.
A mischievous girl presents questions, hypotheses, methodology, and results of kooky experiments that go awry. Some are a riot (yodeling doesn't "speed up a boring car ride"), but others fall flat ("Would gerbils like bigger wheels?" yields inconclusive results--they're too short for the Ferris wheel). Carpenter's striking pen-and-ink and digital art will elicit chuckles throughout.
(4)
K-3
Illustrated by
Nancy Carpenter.
Freeze a fly in an ice cube? Walk backward to school? Run away from home to go live with beavers? Is there no end to the mischievous things this young girl can think of to do? Apparently not, but the pen-and-ink and computer-generated illustrations incorporating actual objects (stapler, bottle of glue, etc.) add life and humor to the repetitive text.