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ANEMONE IS NOT THE ENEMY

Name: ANEMONE IS NOT THE ENEMY
Author: Anna McGregor
ISBN: 978-1-950354-51-1

by Anna McGregor ; illustrated by Anna McGregor ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2021

Suggests a human lesson from a fish fact made familiar by a popular children’s film.

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Even someone socially awkward can find a friend.

A habit of stinging keeps lonely Anemone from making friends, but for a clownfish, Anemone is just the right companion. Illustrated by the narrative and summarized on the last page of this tale of anthropomorphized sea creatures are three facts about ocean life: Tides rise and fall; hermit crabs use other creatures’ shells for protection, upgrading as they grow; and clownfish and sea anemones have a symbiotic relationship. (The last fact will be familiar to anyone who’s seen Disney’s Finding Nemo.) Anemone’s social difficulties become evident when three small fish wash into its pool during high tide. They know to stay away from its offers of friendship, but the tide goes out, the pool shrinks, and they can’t help but touch Anemone and be stung. “Why do I always sting everyone?” Anemone wonders. But it turns out that stinging can be helpful. When Clownfish is chased into Anemone’s sheltering tentacles by a threatening octopus, it’s the octopus that gets the sting. McGregor’s illustrations have the appearance of having been done with oil pastels. Anemone is a bright pink. The small fish are striped with shades of turquoise and Day-Glo green. The octopus looms large and gray. Attentive readers will be intrigued by the side story of a hermit crab looking for a new home that is enacted along the sandy edges of the main narrative.

Suggests a human lesson from a fish fact made familiar by a popular children’s film. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: June 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-950354-51-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Scribble

Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
A PAIR OF PEARS AND AN ORANGE
by Anna McGregor ; illustrated by Anna McGregor

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)