October 8, 2018
In buoyant rhymed couplets and well-executed meter, Percival (Perfectly Norman) underscores the rewards of resourcefulness and care in this cheering friendship story. Winsome multimedia art by Pym (Little Mouse’s Big Breakfast) shows Alfonzo the goat cutting a dapper figure, clad in a flashy checked coat that is admired by all the neighborhood animals. When he hears the sad croaking of a frog family whose log has rotted away, the goat selflessly rips the cuffs off his jacket to fashion a boat for them. “Alfonzo’s new coat didn’t look quite so smart,/ but he felt a warm glow in the depths of his heart.” The jacket becomes increasingly unraveled as Alfonzo tears off bits and pieces to aid other friends, until the garment is reduced to a collar and a pocket, which, in a particularly moving scene, he uses to save a chick stranded in a tree. When the coatless ungulate ends up shivering in a blizzard, his pals pay his kindness forward, and the story leads to a rewarding and colorful finale featuring Alfonzo and other animal friends sporting dazzling cold-weather garb. Ages 3–6.
September 1, 2018
Alfonzo the goat loves his new coat, but he loves helping others more."Let me tell you the tale of Alfonzo the goat, / who was terribly proud of his lovely new coat." The text mostly continues in anapestic tetrameter, with a few awkward adjustments for those reading it aloud. Almost immediately after strutting about in his beautiful new coat, Alfonzo hears distress signals from a family of newly homeless frogs. Without hesitation, he enlists a bird to pick some stitches out of one of the sleeves, and the frogs have a new home: a boat. (Well, it had to rhyme with coat, right?) With "a warm glow in the depths of his heart," Alfonzo continues to help animals in trouble by mutilating his new coat. By the time it is all gone and he is close to hypothermia, "Someone was shining around a bright light." No one is literally shining, as the line suggests; someone is using an instrument that casts a bright light upon the shivering goat. As readers may have expected, Alfonzo the good Samaritan reaps an eventual reward. The art is appropriate: brightly colored, stylized, anthropomorphic animals--humorously goggle-eyed--appear in various indoor and outdoor landscapes. The layout aids in a read-aloud: Sometimes end rhymes and ending near rhymes are situated so that a reader can pause and let listeners guess the pending word. But that doesn't make it good verse.This morality tale tries too hard to be a poem. (Picture book. 3-4)
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November 1, 2018
Preschool-K Goat can't wait to go for a walk in his new yellow coat, made extra special by its glass buttons, plaid fabric, and grass-green trim. The small, saucer-eyed goat radiates happiness on his stroll until he encounters a family of frogs in need of help. With only a trace of wistfulness, Goat parts with his jacket's green cuffs, so the frogs can fashion a much-needed boat. Soon afterward, he finds a cat with its tail caught in a mousetrap, which he quickly frees and bandages with another fabric strip from his coat. See the pattern? Little ones will get to practice their prediction skills as Goat continues through the woods, using bits of his coat to help others until there is nothing left. Of course his animal friends won't leave him out in the cold, appearing en masse with a gift to show their appreciation. Rhyming couplets relay this story of kindness and generosity, but the illustrations, rendered in watercolor and pencil crayon, are what will endear it to readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)