This woodland duo’s lesson in communication is ultimately unpersuasive.
Two friends try to apologize.
Scribble and Swoop are best friends, spending their days supporting each other’s creative endeavors in the ever sunny Walnut Woods. Scribble is a fuzzy orange squirrel, and Swoop is a blue-and-white owl with eyelashes and a heart-shaped face, and one day they decide to move in together. In an idyllic three-page moving montage, they find the perfect place, with “room for two with a little left over,” and unpack their things, individually deciding that the porch would be the ideal place to pursue their respective craft—and hiding it from their housemate. Things go predictably south, as Scribble wakes up early to open “the world’s greatest theater” while Swoop shuffles her tools into her dream studio space. A “CLATTER-BANG-CRASH” of a fight ensues, creating plenty of lingering resentment. A very drawn-out and ultimately anticlimactic apology sequence follows, in which readers are taught (probably not for the first time) that sorry “only works if you mean it.” Ironically, Scribble, though repentant, never does give a genuine apology, leaving Swoop to fix his curtains, his special pencil, and his ego, and then go on to create the sets for his plays. Julian’s sweet watercolor illustrations bring the ultimately uninspired text to life, with a cheerful palette and some creative use of the gutter.
This woodland duo’s lesson in communication is ultimately unpersuasive. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68010-190-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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