fangled

Up-to-the-minute illustrations and graphic design serve as the new-fangled foil to the well-known Russian folktale. The text has a familiar, classic cadence; the publisher says that Tolstoy was the first to record the story, in the 19th century. The eponymous turnip, as many readers will already know, grows to colossal size and won't budge from the ground, forcing an elderly farmer couple to seek assistance from a succession of barn animals in order to pull it out. Working in a style reminiscent of Yumi Heo's for its flatness and angularity, Sharkey (Tales of Wisdom and Wonder) produces figures with beady eyes, spindly limbs and small, delineated smiles. They toil against a stark, elemental landscape that is mostly sky. The text itself takes on visual prominence, displayed centrally in large type, sometimes curving, sometimes magnified for effect. The animals (e.g., the two pot-bellied pigs, the three black cats, the four speckled hens) caper acrobatically, while the turnip itself is depicted as monumentally spherical as a planet. Two recent versions of this tale, Jan Peck and Barry Root's The Giant Carrot and Vladimir Vagin's The Enormous Carrot, build momentum right up to the ending, when all the animals share in a boisterous feast; here, the climactic moment comes earlier, when the turnip is finally dislodged. Sharkey's pacing creates a circular balance: the story begins calmly and ends calmly, with plenty of fun in between. Ages 2-5. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

books

Molly Blaisdell writes books for kids (over 30!). She loves to doodle too. Chicken doodles have been showing up in the margins of her papers for years. This is the first time they have shown up in one of her books.

permitted

PreS-Gr 2-Another winner from this talented creative team. Jenkins's trademark cut-paper collages are up to their usual standard, which is to say they are outstanding, as he captures 23 different newborns on their first day of life. Some of the animals are familiar, such as giraffes and penguins, while others are more exotic, such as a sifaka, a muntjac, and a blue wildebeest. A few simple, clearly written sentences describe the wide variety of things that these youngsters can or cannot do upon entering the world. Children should find the information intriguing as they learn about capybaras that can swim and dive when only a few hours old and how mother zebras memorize the pattern of stripes on their babies so they can recognize them among the thousands of others in the herd. The striking depictions of mother and child set against full-bleed colored backgrounds or clean white space should make for many return readings. Additional information on each animal is included in the back matter. A first purchase for most libraries.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.