Sometimes It's Storks

by L. J. R. Kelly, Brothers Hilts (Illustrator)

Overview

A funny, surrealist take on the classic baby delivery story
 
Baby delivery is a tricky business: When the top-notch stork is not available, a substitute has to step in. But a delicious-looking fish distracts him, and he misplaces the baby en route. As one animal encounter leads to another, the baby travels the world: up to the North Pole atop a whale, to Australia with migrating geese, and to the Brisbane Zoo by kangaroo, before finally landing at home.
 
In Sometimes It's Storks, L. J. R. Kelly and the Brothers Hilts offer a whimsical tale of animals and adventure, proposing a creative answer to the puzzling question of where babies come from.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780399256820
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Pages:	32
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	3 - 5 Years

About the Author

L. J. R. Kelly is the author of the picture book Blanket and Bear. He is Managing Director of the literary estate of his grandfather, Roald Dahl. L. J. R. Kelly studied politics at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, and writing at Dartmouth College. He lives and works in London.
 
The Brothers Hilts are Ben (the older one) and Sean (the younger one). They work as a team illustrating, designing and constantly comparing to see whose ideas are better. Sean went to Rhode Island School of Design and Ben went to Cooper Union in New York City. They now live and work in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Sometimes It’s Storks:

“A delight to read aloud, with stunning images that will add humor and surprise to storytime.”—School Library Journal

“Kelly (Blanket & Bear, a Remarkable Pair) runs with the age-old legend of baby-delivering storks as two parents describe, in doggerel verse, their child’s circuitous path to reach them.”—Publishers Weekly

“[T]his adventure of a newborn baby, ordered by a mother and father for delivery to them by a stork, drifts by air, sea, desert, and even dogsled across a vividly scattered world of savory enchantments, before arriving safely in New York. Kelly steers a nimble path via rhyming quatrains… Meanwhile, the Brothers Hilts zoom with great panache from the epic double-page spread of a delicately soaring stork flock to the magnified detail of dad’s pink-striped socks.”—Booklist 

From the Publisher

2016-10-26
A stork-delivery mishap leads a baby across the globe before uniting with family. Rhyming text reimagines baby delivery: "Babies arrive by different means, / on rickshaws, beasts or submarines." But this child's journey, as the parents affectionately explain, began with a distractible stork. Hungry, the winged creature stops for a snack only to lose its bundle to a croc. From whale to bear to dog sled and moose, the infant goes (and grows)—crawling, escaping, traveling, living. At last, the tot arrives home and into the loving arms of expectant parents. Dreamlike digital illustrations with painted collage perfectly match the text. There is a free-form waggishness that permeates the artwork, as the Brothers Hilts play with size, shape, and pattern in unconventional ways that work. Done in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, fantastical stand-alone images weave together to bring the tale full circle. There is no evidence of an intent to mislead or skirt the age-old question of where babies come from; rather, the sensational nature of the work offers to take readers on delightful flights of fancy. The baby's timeline from birth to joining parents who have long anticipated a child's arrival also speaks to families who've adopted. While the myth of stork delivery has recently been repopularized elsewhere, this visually stunning work stands apart. (Picture book. 3-7)

Kirkus Reviews