The information is important, but the presentation is depressing.
When Mr. Tate’s class helps with beach cleanup, they learn about the importance of the ocean and listen to a tally of sea creatures, from one to 10.
A friendly sea captain meets the group on a trash-strewn shore and encourages them to listen to the sad sea. From one whale breaching to 10 dolphins leaping, the sea introduces some of its inhabitants. This counting exercise, appropriate for very young readers, is followed by an explanation of why oceans matter, including the role of phytoplankton in the food chain and atmosphere and a poem about the water cycle. (Happily for tots in over their heads, the successful beach cleanup is followed by a boat trip.) This well-meant but muddled picture book seems to be addressing two different audiences: preschoolers who might enjoy the counting exercise (and not be bothered by sea turtles who “surf” through kelp or slow-moving seahorses who “gallop”); and elementary school–aged children ready for more complicated explanations and for the sad reality of oil and sewage spills and dead animals. Snow’s digital collages effectively show how out of place human trash is on a sandy beach. The story pattern will be familiar to readers of this pair’s earlier environmental field-trip descriptions of trees and bees.
The information is important, but the presentation is depressing. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7871-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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