November 14, 2016
“The day was set; we called New York,/ and they decreed you’d come by stork.” Kelly (Blanket & Bear, a Remarkable Pair) runs with the age-old legend of baby-delivering storks as two parents describe, in doggerel verse, their child’s circuitous path to reach them—a lost luggage story on steroids. The stork puts the baby down for a moment, “far too close to a thieving croc,/ who floated you away downstream/ to give you to his friend the bream.” Colored in saturated primary hues, the Hilts brothers’ (Seaver the Weaver) graphic, printlike spreads offer a hide-and-seek game as readers look for the blue, jug-eared baby and the stork, following nervously at a distance. Eventually, the baby arrives at its parents’ doorstep with an explanatory letter: “This package from the Brisbane Zoo/ contains something owned by you.” The chain of animal handoffs is drawn out, but the ridiculousness of the effort is part of Kelly’s story’s appeal, as is the idea of parents with enough creative moxie to spin such a wild tale. Ages 3–5. Author’s agent: Grainne Fox, Fletcher & Company. Illustrators’ agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.
November 15, 2016
A stork-delivery mishap leads a baby across the globe before uniting with family. Rhyming text reimagines baby delivery: "Babies arrive by different means, / on rickshaws, beasts or submarines." But this child's journey, as the parents affectionately explain, began with a distractible stork. Hungry, the winged creature stops for a snack only to lose its bundle to a croc. From whale to bear to dog sled and moose, the infant goes (and grows)--crawling, escaping, traveling, living. At last, the tot arrives home and into the loving arms of expectant parents. Dreamlike digital illustrations with painted collage perfectly match the text. There is a free-form waggishness that permeates the artwork, as the Brothers Hilts play with size, shape, and pattern in unconventional ways that work. Done in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, fantastical stand-alone images weave together to bring the tale full circle. There is no evidence of an intent to mislead or skirt the age-old question of where babies come from; rather, the sensational nature of the work offers to take readers on delightful flights of fancy. The baby's timeline from birth to joining parents who have long anticipated a child's arrival also speaks to families who've adopted. While the myth of stork delivery has recently been repopularized elsewhere, this visually stunning work stands apart. (Picture book. 3-7)
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February 1, 2017
PreS-Gr 1-Raising a baby is always full of surprises, but Kelly and the Brothers Hilts create an extra-amazing arrival story of the little one in this refreshing picture book. The age-old question, "Where do babies come from?" is answered in a bouncing AA/BB rhyme scheme, but this time the stork (gasp!) loses the baby. The illustrations highlight the most unexpected moments of the raucous trip the baby takes to eventually reach the intended destination. At one point, the tiny blue baby lands on an Australian beach, "where a hermit crab found you/(a tiny chap whom you outgrew/who passed you to a kangaroo/who lost you at the Brisbane Zoo)." Readers will delight in finding where the infant has gone on each page, with the poetry of the writing lending itself well to hand clapping and singing. This tale is ripe for felt board activities to support the wild adventures of this little one.
Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2016
Grades K-2 Like a gourmet take-out order gone magically astray, this adventure of a newborn baby, ordered by a mother and father for delivery to them by a stork, drifts by air, sea, desert, and even dogsled across a vividly scattered world of savory enchantments, before arriving safely in New York. Kelly steers a nimble path via rhyming quatrains narrated by the parents, who address the child throughout in the informal second person: The whale took off for the Northern Pole / with you atop his great blowhole. Meanwhile, the Brothers Hilts zoom with great panache from the epic double-page spread of a delicately soaring stork flock to the magnified detail of dad's pink-striped socks. Repeated diagonal slashes seem to turn the pages for us. Pictorially the volume wears Eric Carle's influence lightly and gallantly. The slight irony of a suggested all's-well-that-ends-well conclusion, following such dashing exploits, may leave some readers imagining that the life to come for this baby might just be something of an anticlimax.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2017
"The day was set; we called New York, / and they decreed you'd come by stork." A parent tells the convoluted tale of how a child joined the family: the stork, distracted by a fish, put the baby on a rock; a crocodile gave the baby to a bream; etc. The rhymes scuttle by smoothly, swept along by the chunky, vaguely retro mixed-media art.
(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)