Delightful and heartwarming, this read-aloud performs like a welcoming embrace. Brava, amiko!
Kindness is a universal language.
Kemala, an optimistic, talkative pangolin, has moved to “her new town” and anticipates meeting new friends. Her curiosity and interest in her new environment are tinged with anxiety and ambivalence about joining a new school because of “a language Kemala didn’t know.” With trepidation, humor, and help from anteater classmate Ana, Kemala discovers a connection through puppetry. Meanwhile, her hide thickens as she tackles Esperanto, the “foreign” language used among this assemblage of animal characters drawn from different continents. The focus on a fundamentally global language spoken by creatures from diverse habitats conveys a utopian-yet-accessible vision in which no one is an outsider. In featuring an echidna, a red fox, an owl, a raccoon, a skunk, and a numbat sharing the classroom with a pangolin, for example, while crafting Indonesian-style shadow puppets of other animals (tiger, elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus, and penguin), the illustrations emphasize the power of imaginative role play. With everyone’s exuberant encouragement, Kemala overcomes her shyness and stage fright to find her new voice. A concluding note explains Esperanto and provides translations of the dialogue as well as offering further information on pangolins. Readers with familiarity with Southeast Asia may recognize Kemala’s name as Indonesian or Malaysian.
Delightful and heartwarming, this read-aloud performs like a welcoming embrace. Brava, amiko! (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-31046-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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