A helpful title for kids growing up in the social media age.
A fame-obsessed peacock gains much-needed perspective.
A purple peacock at the zoo loves having his photo taken by visitors and showing off his beautiful plumage. A young girl named Sketch with unnaturally pink skin is the only one uninterested in taking his photo; instead, she regularly visits Peacock to draw pictures of him in her notebook and tell him stories. Hungry for even more fame, Peacock escapes the zoo. He parades down the street on the roof of a school bus, strutting, posing, and garnering more and more attention. He wanders into a library, where everyone except the stereotypically stern librarian marvels at him. But being famous, it turns out, is exhausting; luckily, worn-out Peacock runs into Sketch, who begs him to “go back home.” Back at the zoo, Peacock loses his fan base when his feathers start to molt, but loyal Sketch is there to comfort him as the seasons change. Peterkin’s straightforward yet moving cautionary tale is capped off by backmatter urging caregivers to use the “3 C’s” of social media—content, contact, and conduct—as a framework for discussing “the benefits and risks of social media” with children. Prabhat’s cartoon-style digital illustrations depict animal and human figures alike with oversized, round eyes and vibrant colors and use close-ups to capture key emotional moments. Background characters have a range of skin tones from deep brown to tan.
A helpful title for kids growing up in the social media age. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4338-3279-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Magination/American Psychological Association
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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