An original, engaging tale that emphasizes creativity and bravery.
A girl enables her village to count again in this picture book.
A village’s people “counted to five as much as they could.” For example, they say, “One-two-three-four-five little ducks swimming in the pond!” One night, “the Evil, Mean, Mad Magician,” a White man, steals the three from “the hall where the numbers were kept.” The diverse townspeople panic, counting “One-two-four-five.” A “wise old lady” asks them to close their eyes and raise their hands. She instructs: “If you are not the strongest person in the land…put your hand down.” After she asks, “Are you the smartest?,” the only person left is a medium-brown-skinned girl. The villagers elect her to retrieve the three. Following a challenging journey, she spies the thief burying the stolen number. When it sprouts into a tree, he says, “those silly townspeople will never, ever be able to count to five again.” Devastated, the girl notices “tiny little threes” between the branches and brings one home. The townspeople rejoice when she plants it and it grows into a tree sprouting “3” shapes. She instructs everyone to plant “threes…across the land” so “the…Magician will never be able to steal them.” The enjoyable story features a quirky mix of fantasy and adventure. Farkas’ language (“skulked and snuck and crawled”) is lively. The instances of resourcefulness and strength will appeal to young readers. Mangal’s simple illustrations include old-fashioned and medieval-esque details. The depictions of numbers add helpful visual context.
An original, engaging tale that emphasizes creativity and bravery.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-52-559157-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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