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SUN AND MOON SISTERS

A sweet morality tale of cosmic misadventures and sibling rivalry.

After jealousy dims their affections, sisters learn to let love shine in this original tale that is redolent of folklore.

Sun and Moon, nearly identical apart from the details of their matching red dresses, argue repeatedly over which of them is more beloved by humans. To settle this debate once and for all, the pale-skinned, dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked little girls with silvery locks decide to trade places. The results are as expected, with weary children finally begging Moon to offer them respite from the blistering heat, and then, when dawn does not come, desperately wishing for Sun to return to warm the Earth. The children deliver a message to the bewildered duo, explaining that they matter equally and should focus on performing their respective duties, after which all is once again right both on Earth and in the heavens. In this book translated from the French, some illustrations hint at the author/illustrator’s Vietnamese origins, for example showing a dark-haired girl fishing with a bamboo pole and a child wearing a conical Southeast Asian–style hat. The story unfolds predictably in the manner of traditional pourquoi tales, and the prose is plain and serviceable. It is the illustrations that stand out, their jewel tones, elegant lines, and complex textures managing to look simultaneously contemporary and timeless.

A sweet morality tale of cosmic misadventures and sibling rivalry. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-60887-732-4

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Insight Kids

Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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

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LOVE FROM THE CRAYONS

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

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