Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2. While youngsters will snicker at the goofy green iguanas, the multitudinous pink snails with their curly purple shells, Milo Beaver, Bubba Bullfrog, and Betty Jane Boa, they’ll remain clueless to the process of measurement. Measuring is supposed to eliminate the approximation of an eyeball guesstimate, but the concept is garbled here. In Hightower’s incremental world, an inch equals one snail. So, by extension, there are 36 snail-lengths corresponding to the measurement Milo needs to gnaw the three-foot-long log needed to patch his dam. At least that’s intellectual (and lazy) Bubba Bullfrog’s solution to dim bulb Milo’s dilemma. The “solution” gets mathematically?and logistically?less complicated as longer animals become the larger units corresponding to a foot and a yard. But, regardless of the number of creatures required, the measuring tools all have their shortcomings as they wander off, act silly, threaten, or otherwise prove unwilling to line up and be counted. Ultimately, the appropriate lengths don’t matter anyway since the joke’s on Milo?and readers?when Bubba goes home and retrieves his yardstick to prove that Betty Jane is exactly one yard long. Like Hightower’s text, Novak’s simple and colorful acrylics are, unfortunately, uninspired.?John Sigwald, Unger Memorial Library, Plainview, TX
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A math lesson (inches, feet, and yards) in story form: Milo the Beaver needs to cut a branch exactly 36 inches long to bridge a gap in his dam. Bubba Frog suggests different ways of measuring it–line up 36 healthy snails, feelers to tails, or 3 iguana lizards, nose to tail, or Betty Jane Boa all by herself. But the snails are too slow lining up, the lizards are too frisky, Betty Jane is more interested in putting the squeeze on Milo, and it turns out that Bubba has a yardstick at home. It’s all pretty silly, but the relationships between these three units of measure will probably stick in children’s minds. Novak’s acrylic-rendered critters share a family resemblance with certain Saturday-morning cartoons; a picnicking pair of mice straight from the pages of his Mouse TV (1994) are silent observers of all the shenanigans. (Picture book. 4-7) — Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Matt Novak has written and illustrated many books, among them The Robobots, The Pillow War, and Elmer Blunt’s Open House. His Mouse TV was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Newt received an IRA Children’s Choice Award. Matt has been a puppeteer, a teacher, and a Disney artist. He and his family now live in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
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