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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607003173815 | Picture Books | FREUDIG | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
2017 Moonbean Children's Book Awards Gold Medal for Best Picture Book (Ages 4-8)
2017 Maine Literary Awards Children's Book Award Finalist
On some days, there's just not a good word for someone to describe the way they are feeling. If their socks are sagging and their pants are wrinkled, what do you call it?
Whether a reader is feeling like a turtle or halfway wild, author Laura Freudig has found a delightful new way to describe those feelings in this poetic and playful picture book that connects children, not just to feelings and emotions, but also to animals and the quirks and patterns of the natural world. Readers will follow one family through the course of a day as they march through meadows like ants, dive to the depths like seals, play hide and seek like fireflies, and chatter like raccoons, until, at last, "... when the house is still and all we can hear are the soft, slow breaths of the ones we love, we're a family of bears."
Illustrator Kevin Barry blends the real with the fantastic in works of art that will make young readers marvel, dream, and lean in for a closer look.
Author Notes
Author Laura Freudig lives on an island along the Maine coast with her husband, five children, two ducks, 15 chickens, one dog, and 9,000 honeybees. She likes reading, singing, hiking, and gardening.
At an early age, illustrator Kevin Barry began drawing crazy cats and martial artist monkeys on the backs (and corners) of his homework assignments, a habit he has yet to break. He was thrilled to put this wildlife sketching inclination to good use in illustrating Halfway Wild. When not illustrating books for children, the award-winning children's book illustrator can be found either scratching out stories with elementary students; snout deep in a book; or exploring the wilds of New England with his Halfway Wild family.
Reviews (2)
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2-Freudig's debut picture book compares humans to wild animals. As a family of five go about their day, they morph into insects, birds, and forest mammals. The brother and sister look like bumblebees when they wake up because they fly out of their bunk beds with translucent wings. During breakfast, they use their moose antlers to help each other reach the cereal above the fridge. After some painting and TV, they go outside with their grandma and splash in the puddles with their webbed duck feet. On the beach, they are ants carrying a lot of things in their arms and on their backs, and seals swimming gracefully in the water. Bedtime routines involve comparisons to thirsty foxes, playful fireflies, and imaginary dragons. Barry turns the characters into animals by adding cute extremities such as ears, wings, tails, and feet. VERDICT This fun read-aloud about a loving family encourages children to mimic the animal behaviors depicted.-Tanya Boudreau, Cold Lake Public Library, Alta. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
A tight-knit family shifts into a variety of human-animal hybrids as they spend a day together. One of the children narrates, explaining that her family is "never the same from one day to the next." When they "start to buzz and tumble" at daybreak, "we're a family of bumblebees," writes debut author Freudig. And when the siblings and their grandmother splash around in a puddle, "we're a family of ducks," all three gaining webbed feet and long, feathery wings. Barry's (Schnitzel) caricatured aesthetic fits the unusual goings-on, even if the results aren't always appealing in a traditional sense (during the family's antlike walk to the beach, Dad uses his bulging insect abdomen to balance a beach ball, umbrella, and other supplies). Additionally, the logic to the transformations can be fuzzy: while it makes sense that the family would become seals while playing in the sea or skunks when baths are overdue, it's less clear what gulping down water after a spicy meal has to do with foxes or why getting paint-spattered during an art project would invoke (mostly black-and-white) puffins. Ages 3-7. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.