Young readers’ imaginations are sure to be fired by Sayre’s awe-inspiring photos and by the bite-sized science facts...
Leaves of orange, gold, and red shout from amid the last of summer’s fading green canvas.
Shy at first, then with a bold advance, the ripple of flaming colors races through the forest like a metachronal wave until the miserly hoarders of chlorophyll are too embarrassed to do much more than sulk. A carpet of leaves; a canopy of leaves—a crescendo of leaves. Sayre’s stunning photographic images sweep across each majestic double-page spread. The rhyming text meanders from one-word identifiers—“Midribs”—to ecstatic exclamations: “So many leaves!” However, the irregular meter occasionally sputters. “Fall is ending. // Goodbye, leaf show. / Winter is coming…. // Oh, / hello, snow!” Also, whereas critters and weather figured prominently in Sayre’s previous offerings, here they are very minor players and are sorely missed. There are cameo appearances by wind and sun and only four shots of fauna—two squirrels, a mallard, and a flight of geese. This absence, especially as this is the season when forest animals and insects are frenetically preparing for the cold, contributes to a sterility of tone despite the wonder of fall’s audacious palette. In addition, the decision to introduce the next season is disappointing. Spring kept its nose out of Best in Snow (2016), and instead of stealing fall’s thunder, winter should have done the same. Fortunately, nature’s glorious riot overpowers these missteps.
Young readers’ imaginations are sure to be fired by Sayre’s awe-inspiring photos and by the bite-sized science facts provided at the end of the book. (Informational picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7984-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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