For children who appreciate clever and silly puns (Picture book. 4-8)
One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, more—more potato puns than you can count, as a young spud strives to win the sack race at the Spud City Festival.
After training all year to win the Golden Bushel Award, Chip learns he must beat Curly, the new spud in town. From pre-race to finish, Breisacher and Heinsz use their setup to share verbal and brightly colored visual puns that children will enjoy. The race begins at the corner of Russet Boulevard and Fry Avenue. Couch potatoes—resting on a couch, of course—line the race route. The Waffle Fries can’t decide whom to root on. First Chip is in the lead. Then Curly speeds past. After Curly trips, the way is clear for Chip to win. Instead he offers Curly a hand up, and they race toward the finish line together. Chip doesn’t win, but he gains a friend, and Chip and Curly team up for the relay. Maybe that coveted Golden Bushel Award is within reach after all. All characters are potatoes illustrated in a range of (potato-y) skin tones. However, both Chip and Curly are male, and only the Sweet Potato cheerleaders are explicitly coded as female (with pink skirts and pompoms). The book’s raison d’être is the wordplay, with Home Fries, Tater Tots, and Twice Bakes joining the cast of characters and a spud-centric attitude toward verbs: These taters “wedge,” “whip,” “hash,” “pancake,” and “peel,” all leading up to the moment when “Chip’s dreams of winning [are] mashed.”
For children who appreciate clever and silly puns (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-58536-408-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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