Whose Hatchlings Are They? Daddy Honk Honk! by Rosalinde Bonnet

IT IS THE END OF SUMMER IN THE ARCTIC. SNOW WILL SOON COVER THE TUNDRA.

EVERYONE IS ENJOYING THE LAST SUNNY DAYS.

Aput the Arctic fox is catching those last warm rays, feeling his fur grow warm as he lies on his back and sleepily watches the Canada geese flocking up to fly south, Suddenly he spots something left behind.

It's a speckled goose egg, slow to hatch.

But when Aput picks it up, the shell cracks right down the middle and a tiny blue goose pokes his head out, opens his eyes, sees Aput, and says...

"DADDY HONK HONK!"

Yep. Baby geese imprint on the first thing they see, and for this gosling, Aput is his parent! The fox's first response is to protest.

"I AM NOT YOUR DADDY!"

But the baby goose is a total cutie, and Aput is charmed. He sets off to find the gosling a family and fortunately, there are plenty of other tundra sunbathers who are all too eager to give him parental advice. A mother lemming is up to her eyebrows with babies, but she does have an extra fuzzy pink cap to offer, pointing out that it is very important to keep new babies warm. Olaf and Lilly the musk oxen offer some seedy grass to feed the baby, and the gosling chows down right away.

"DADDY CHOMP CHOMP!"

Nanook the Polar Bear is trying to do her morning yoga meditation. She's annoyed by the honking, and suggests that Aput needs to put that baby down for a nap posthaste. As Aput makes his charge a grassy cradle, Granny Puffin puts in her two-cents' worth of parental advice.

"YOU SHOULD ROCK HIM!" SHE SUGGESTS.

But the gosling is too excited to sleep, and seeing someone in the water, she jumps in, right on the belly of a sleeping walrus and slides down his tummy into the sea, which she takes to like an, er, gosling to water. Soon she is joined by a young narwhal, and the pool party begins.

"DADDY SPLISH SPLASH!"

"YOU MUST ALWAYS KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BABY!" CAUTIONS EDDA THE WHALE, FLIPPING THE BABY BACK TO APUT WITH HER FLUKE.

Finally the baby goose begins to tucker out, and Aput pulls out Andersen's Wild Swans as a bedtime story. All his friends gather round to listen as the sun sets over the tundra. It is a lovely scene.

"THIS BABY NEEDS A BEAUTIFUL NAME!" THEY ALL AGREE.

And Aurora it is, as the no-longer orphaned gosling settles down, surrounded by her new family, in Rosalinde Bonnet's charming Daddy Honk Honk! (Dial Books, 2017). This tale of accidental parenthood has a lot to say about being a father and about being an adoptive parent, but also about how it often "takes a village" to provide all a young one needs to grow up. Bonnet's story is humorous, filled with a recurring chorus of "Daddy Honk Honks," and a plentitude of advice from Aput's opinionated neighbors, but there's a warm reassurance for youngsters that little Aurora will have everything she needs to grow in her new home.

Bonnet's artwork is simple, done mostly in blackline drawings that border on the minimal, contrasted with the bright colors of flowers in the background. Illustrator Bonnet paces the story with cartoon-paneled pages set against contrasting full two-page spreads which show off the blooming tundra, the setting sun over the ocean, and the blended blues and greens of the northern lights that give little Aurora her name, or as Publishers Weekly puts it succinctly, "The ink-and-watercolor drawings are a mixture of atmospheric minimalism and impressive detail." This is a sweet story of love lost and found that fortuitously ends with the baby sleeping soundly for a very good goodnight.

Share this story with Ryan T. Higgins' hilarious hatchling goose hit, Mother Bruce (see review here.)

Sad Dad? How to Cheer Up Dad by Fred Koehler

"SAD DAD BAD HAD.

WHAT A DAY DAD HAD," said Dr. Seuss in his Hop on Pop (I Can Read It All By Myself). And Dad Elephant is having One of Those Days.

All he did was put healthy raisins in Little Jumbo's oatmeal, and Little Jumbo shot them high in the air through his trunk. Little Jumbo and Dad both discover that (at least) raisins don't stick to the ceiling. But just look at the mess on the floor!

One look at Dad's face and Little Jumbo knows he needs to do something fast. L. J. launches his charm offensive.

HE THOUGHT A HUG WOULD BE A GOOD START.

Then L.J. takes Dad outside to play catch.

SINCE DAD LOVES DESSERT, LITTLE JUMBO AGREED TO SHARE AN ICE CREAM CONE.

That done, he remembers how relaxing fishing can be for Dad, so the two head down to the pier to pull in a good haul!

Will all the fun and games get the grumbles out of Dad by bedtime? In Fred Koehler's How to Cheer Up Dad (Dial Books, 2014) a sly little elephant knows how to make his Dad sad no more, yawning and ready for his favorite bedtime story, The Sleepy Little Elephant. With trunk in cheek, Koehler's charming Little Jumbo makes amends and makes his Dad happy. As Publishers Weekly adds, "Koehler’s words adopt the tone of a confident preschooler, while his sweetly scraggly illustrations depict the reality of each scenario with a wink." Fun fare for Fathers Day.

Recalculating Directions. Turn Left At the Cow by Lisa Bullard

The deputy looked back at me. "I can't give you the answers to those questions, kid. I did think of your dad as my friend. But turns out I didn't really know him the way I thought I did."

Deputy Dude continued. "As far as the money goes, here's the thing.  In law enforcement you learn that lots of times the obvious answer is the right answer.  I'm not real big on coincidences.  I mean, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but the truth is... you and the cash turn up the exact same week. It's almost guaranteed the money's reappearance is connected to you.  

So if there's anything  you want to tell me, I promise to help you out.  I can pull a few strings for the sake of your grandma; you won't be in trouble."

When his mother remarries, Travis is pretty sure he's the third wheel in the way of the newly-wed's summer travel plans, so he "borrows" his mom's credit card number to buy a one-way ticket to the tiny town in Minnesota where his ne'er-do-well dead dad's mother lives, a place so small he jokes that the final GPS direction to find it would have to be "Turn left at the cow." Trav has hopes that his Grandma may know why his father robbed the local bank and disappeared along with the loot, leaving only a drifting boat near an island in the local lake and questions about his presumed drowning.

But at first Grandma is grim and tight-lipped. The only things from the past she reveals to Trav are the seemingly ancient wrapped remains of his dad's hunting and fishing prowess in the hiccuping old freezer that he is assigned to clean out as the first part in his penance for running away. Travis and Grandma load the "dead animal parts," frozen in plastic Halloween bags labelled "Deer" and "Walleye," to haul them off to the dump, where Trav has his first encounter with "Crazy Carl," a man who once mentored his dad but now is reduced to muttering and living amid the trash. Crazy Carl, however, is sharp enough to recognize Trav as his father's son and in the midst of his mutterings, suddenly says cryptically, "I know where it is."

As Travis soon learns, "it," is the missing loot from the bank robbery, now a local legend, centering mostly around the small island in the lake which folks from town have spent much spare time digging up over the past thirteen years. With the help of a couple of new friends, the football-loving Kenny and his good-looking cousin Isabelle, a.k.a Iz, Travis is filled in on the missing chapter in his family history according to village lore and begins his own search of the reputed "treasure" island where his dad is believed to have buried the money on the night of his disappearance. Travis feels he is beginning to understand why his mother refused to tell him anything about his father, and despite her initial tight-lipped distance, he and his grandmother begin to feel a new rapport.

But then, after Grandma gives Trav money to buy a new bike at the local store, "bait" notes from the robbery turn up in the day's till. Travis is immediately the prime suspect. Then he receives an anonymous warning, spelled out with letters cut from a newspaper:

I KNOW YOU HAVE THE $$$.
BURY IT ON THE ISLAND WITHIN 24 HOURS.
LOCATION MARKED ON MAP.
DO IT OR YOU'LL BE SORRY!

And in true mystery style, it is only during that midnight bike ride to the dump to meet the suspect that Travis suddenly realizes exactly where the stolen money must be.  (Hint: Foreshadowing here!)

Lisa Bullard's just-released Turn Left at the Cow (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) catches just the right combination of  a buried treasure mystery, a brush with a mendacious murderer, a recalculation of family dynamics, and a bit of  sweet summer romance in this cool-kid-from-L.A.-meets-mystery-in-dairyland page turner. A farmland detective story in which even the setting plays a part, this debut novel is well-plotted and measured in development. and despite its undeniably entertaining style, proves to be somewhat of a coming-of-age novel as well. Teen sleuthing, a dash of life-and-death danger, and a hint of first love by the lake will make this one appealing to middle readers, both male and female.

Light the Night: It's A Firefly Night by Dianne Ochiltree

WHEN THE MOON IS HIGH

AND THE STARS ARE BRIGHT,

DADDY TELLS ME

IT'S A FIREFLY NIGHT.

There are warm nights in early summer when an ordinary backyard is bright with magical lights, a night when the fireflies, or lightning bugs, first appear, lifting off from the ground and slowly ascending through the air to the trees, dip... flash... dip... flash...dip... flash.

In their nightclothes, a pink gown for the girl, bathrobe and slippers for Dad, the two go outside into the early moonlight. The girl, filled with that primeval urge to capture a piece of that magic for herself, has a big jar in which she proceeds to capture one, two, three, four fireflies until at last she has ten, making a little lantern of greenish light that she can hold in her hands.

I LOVE CATCHING FIREFLIES

BUT THEY ARE NOT MINE.

I TAKE ONE GENTLY

OUT OF THE JAR.

In that peculiar way of the lightning bug, slowly climbing up the hand until it reaches the highest point before it carefully opens its carapace and spreads its wings, all ten of the fireflies are set free to rise again through the air until her jar is again empty, leaving her hoping that

... TOMORROW WILL BE A FIREFLY NIGHT.

In their just-published It's a Firefly Night (Blue Apple, 2013) Dianne Ochiltree's lyric verse and Betsy Snyder's soft color collages convey something of the wonder and excitement of a summer night lit by those mystery bugs capable of generating light without heat. The author and illustrator together catch some of that joy of childhood, running barefoot through the twilight to catch and hold a bit of that wondrous light in hand, and then setting it free to light another night.  The author also appends a double-page spread of firefly facts which only add to the fascination of these truly phenomenal little beetles.

Whatchamacallit? My Father Knows the Names of Things by Jane Yolen

MY FATHER KNOWS THE NAMES OF THINGS.

EACH BIRD THAT SINGS, THEIR NICKNAMES, TOO.

HE KNOWS THE NAMES OF DOGS. AND CHEESE.

AND SEVEN WORDS THAT ALL MEAN BLUE.

Knowledge begins with nomenclature, and this lucky kid's dad specializes in the science of whatchamacallitology. He knows the names of the planets and lots of the stars. He knows the names of fish and human bones, mosses and bugs--and not just the names, but scientific characteristics of the things he names:

HE KNOWS WHICH FLOWERS ARE THE TALLEST.

AND WHICH BEETLES ARE THE SMALLEST.

AND WHEN WE FLY, HE SAYS OUT LOUD

THE NAME OF EVERY KIND OF CLOUD.

In a fond tribute to her late husband and to those wonderful early childhood years in which kids believe their parents know just about everything, Jane Yolen's newest picture book, My Father Knows the Names of Things (Simon & Schuster, 2010) is an ebullient offering for Fathers Day reading. Illustrator Stephane Jorisch offers an energetic long-legged dad who tries out seven samples of blue paint in broad swaths, all with intriguing names, for his son's room, one who flies him aloft in a bright red two-seater airplane just to point out the types of clouds and mans the tiller while his son snorkels among the various fishes in the sea. He reels off breeds of cats, varieties of candies in the sweet shop, and even shares the names of the dinosaurs that are meanest, not to mention the soaps that get a kid cleanest.

Yolen's easy-going rhymes and Jorisch's sweeping two-page spreads keep the story moving at a jolly pace, one that an inquisitive and energetic dad (or mom) would approve.

HE POINTS OUT EVERYTHING WE SEE

AND TEACHES ALL THE NAMES TO ME.

Read it to your daughters and read it to your sons; here's to dads who know just tons!