Zooni Tales

September 15, 2023
A pooch with perseverance and pals enjoys suspenseful adventures. This collection, made up of three funny, easy-to-read tales and two brief interludes, stars Zooni, a very anthropomorphized dog (not the canine from Madan and Nicola Slater's Bobo & Pup-Pup series), and a variety of not-to-scale animal friends. In "Missing Shoe," Zooni seeks missing footwear and comes across many items and characters that rhyme with shoe, including cockatoo, stew, and emu, all of which end in different letters, though the expectation of a final rhyme could certainly help beginning readers; in a surprise ending, the other shoe drops! Varied rhymes in "Rescue" subtly convey important themes: helping others, persisting even in the face of fear, and making new friends. In "Boating Day," Zooni's desire to help out those in need while out on the water outweighs caution and common sense as a bevy of other creatures crowd into the tiny vessel. Thanks to the flat, full-face perspective, Zooni's head barely changes shape, so his nose and mouth are sometimes weirdly displaced. Readers will find occasional challenging words, like responding, weight, and gorgeous, and the Caveat-like font isn't legible enough to help emerging readers. Still, the fun rhymes and sweetly expressive characters are charming. Despite a few wrinkles, the graphic format and rhyming text will engage young readers. (Graphic fiction. 5-8)

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November 1, 2023
Grades K-2 With narrative unfolding (mostly) in buoyant speech balloons and set in brightly colored, cartoon-style panels, Geisel Honor winner Madan presents five short tales featuring a cheerful anthropomorphic dog and his (mostly) Australia-centered animal friends. In pairing words like kazoo/shrew and confused/bruised, Madan's deft rhyming text combines satisfying predictability with zestful nuance (a tale about a lost shoe cleverly uses only words that rhyme with "oo") but also spices up typical early reader vocabulary with more obscure choices like catacomb, kelp, and askew. Always lively, with varying degrees of drama--from the slapstick shoe search and a sloppy pancake-making fiasco to silly foot races with a collection of unlikely competitors, an unflappable recovery of a cat trapped in a bat-filled cave, and an inspired deliverance from being stranded after a storm at sea--the message in each misadventure is that optimism and teamwork can solve any problem. As the ever-chipper Zooni shows his friends old and new how to make the best of things, these cheerfully bouncy tales will certainly tickle emerging readers.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2023

K-Gr 2-Three stand-alone stories, with the first featuring a napping Zooni who awakes to find her shoe missing and enlists friends to help with the mystery. Kangaroos, an emu, a cockatoo, and a group of monkeys all lead the puppy to three rascally shrews. The little thieves try to hide but are quickly found, and subsequent confessions from the shrews as well as Zooni reveal that the shoe has multiple uses. In the next tale, Zooni happens upon three friends who have lost a fourth in a cave. Brave Zooni leads the way through dark tunnels in search of Cat and meets a friendly bat colony. In the final story, a sudden squall causes havoc in the bay sending Zooni and Cat far from home in their boat. As they try to get back, they pick up their friends lost at sea, but soon discover that they have brought on more rescues than the boat can carry. A kind whale shows up just in time. Clever use of short rhyming phrases coupled with action-packed but gentle stories of friendship will appeal to early readers. The comic storytelling style makes good use of panel sizes, gutters, and dialogue balloons. VERDICT Fans of the author's "Owl and Penguin" books will welcome Zooni. A solid purchase for elementary collections.-Elisabeth LeBris

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