Teeny Tiny Toady

PreS-Gr 2-On the title page spread, Teeny Tiny Toady and her mama are seen sitting at the edge of a pond. On the next spread, Mama Toad yells, "Teeny! Help!" as a gloved hand plucks her up and places her in a bucket. "Hopping faster than she ever in her tiny life had hopped," Teeny gets her larger brothers to help. Even working together, the seven brothers are unable to tip the bucket. They lash sticks into a ladder and climb up to pull Mama out, but they all fall in, instead. It is up to Teeny to save the day. She makes a kite, climbs the ladder to let her family members grasp the kite string, and watches as they are pulled out of the bucket with a strong gust of wind. The tale is reminiscent of Jane Hissey's Jolly Snow and Oliver Jeffers's How To Catch a Star; however, the rhyming text is tongue-trippingly uneven and neither as lyrical nor descriptive as the language in those titles. The distinctive, digitally rendered artwork presents the toads in gentle earth tones against a woodland backdrop conveying the action and emotion of the story and adding many details. But it can't compensate for the weak text. VERDICT Not likely to fly off the shelves.-Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI c Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

When her mom and all her brothers are trapped in a bucket, it's time for Teeny Tiny Toady to screw her courage to the sticking place and hop to the rescue. As big of eyes, personality, and emotion as she is tiny and pink of body in Yamaguchi's swampy ground-level scenes, Teeny is "toadally" terrific. Shoved to the rear by her seven hulking brothers after bursting through the door with the news of their mother's plight, Teeny hops behind, "wishing she could be a bigger, stronger, / hero kind of toad." Then, when her comically dim-bulb brothers not only fail to tip the bucket over, but manage (after ignoring or co-opting several of her savvy suggestions) to fall in themselves, it's left up to her: " I'm too little,' Teeny blubbered. I can't do it! Not alone!' / But she had to, had to, had to. / Tiny Teeny, / on her own." One unlikely but successful stratagem later, everyone is free, jubilant, and praising their diminutive rescuer. " You're a hero!' / What a kid!' / Wanna ride home on my shoulders, Sis?' " No surprise"She absolutely did!" Yamaguchi's illustrations are every bit as adorable as Teeny, her wee pink form hilarious when juxtaposed with her brothers', who resemble warty tennis balls with limbs. A triumphant reaffirmation of the truth that large hearts can beat in small chests, told in playful verse that gallops along with nary a stumble. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

PreS-Gr 2—On the title page spread, Teeny Tiny Toady and her mama are seen sitting at the edge of a pond. On the next spread, Mama Toad yells, "Teeny! Help!" as a gloved hand plucks her up and places her in a bucket. "Hopping faster than she ever in her tiny life had hopped," Teeny gets her larger brothers to help. Even working together, the seven brothers are unable to tip the bucket. They lash sticks into a ladder and climb up to pull Mama out, but they all fall in, instead. It is up to Teeny to save the day. She makes a kite, climbs the ladder to let her family members grasp the kite string, and watches as they are pulled out of the bucket with a strong gust of wind. The tale is reminiscent of Jane Hissey's Jolly Snow and Oliver Jeffers's How To Catch a Star; however, the rhyming text is tongue-trippingly uneven and neither as lyrical nor descriptive as the language in those titles. The distinctive, digitally rendered artwork presents the toads in gentle earth tones against a woodland backdrop conveying the action and emotion of the story and adding many details. But it can't compensate for the weak text. VERDICT Not likely to fly off the shelves.—Laura Scott, Farmington Community Library, MI