For fairy-tale lovers, this appealing story adds a dash of magic to the night sky.
A Master-in-Training accidentally creates his greatest invention in this picture book that offers an original folktale.
Sam is an assistant to the Master, helping the wizened older man create Earth from a castle in the clouds. But the Master has a problem; during the day, he watches the people of Earth, but the darkness of night makes him miss looking at them. Sam promises to think of something, but the route is circuitous. Sam is the inventor of the Mini Moon, which uses leftover Sun Bits; his wife, Clem, is the creator of the rainbow and designs a sky tapestry for sunrise and sunset. When Sam fashions the Mega Moon to solve the Master’s night vision problem, he’s devastated to realize he’s ripped holes in Clem’s sky weavings. But then the Master shows Sam that the holes have created the stars, calling them “your best invention yet.” This charming tale is light on logic and high on whimsy, and the fairy-tale flavor makes it feel like a much older, familiar story. Davis uses accessible language for independent readers and a comforting tone to encourage nighttime lap reading with an adult. The text switches between present and past tense, which may irk some readers. Xi’s illustrations, featuring an all-White, round-faced cast, are full of fancy, and the depictions of acts of creation—Clem’s rainbow weaving and Sam’s Sun Dust sprinkling—are particularly well done.
For fairy-tale lovers, this appealing story adds a dash of magic to the night sky.Pub Date: May 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-836723-7
Page Count: 30
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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