Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!” The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations.
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
The prejudice Clark experienced as a Japanese-American is revealed only in the author’s note, however.Ī clear, well-organized presentation likely to make readers and listeners want to know more about the “Shark Lady” and her favorite creatures. Solano’s illustrations, mostly double-page spreads, emphasize the darkness and mystery of the underwater world occasionally they include faux notebook pages with simple facts about the species. Her story is nicely rounded in text and illustrations with scenes showing Clark with her nose against the glass in the New York Aquarium as a child and from a submersible as an adult. She goes on to summarize a long, productive career with a few well-chosen examples. She demonstrates young Genie’s early passion by describing her weekly visits to the New York Aquarium, her childhood apartment full of fish and reptiles, and her habit of taking notes. Lang’s welcome picture-book biography introduces a trailblazing female scientist to very young readers and listeners. She dove into caves to see fearsome requiem sharks quietly being cleaned by tiny remora fish. She opened the Cape Haze Marine Laboratory (now Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium) in Florida and proved that they could be trained. Fascinated with sharks from childhood, Eugenie Clark spent a lifetime researching these “magnificent and misunderstood” creatures.Īt a time when women were discouraged from even entering professional fields, Eugenie Clark (1922-2015) pioneered shark research in and out of the water.
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