An irrepressible heroine in an effervescent book.
Young Edith—Eddie to her friends—goes looking for the perfect birthday present for her mother. Fortunately she has lots of friends.
Overhearing her sister say “birthday—Mommy—fuzzy—little—squishy," Eddie is determined to find a fabulous gift that matches that description for her mother. Off she hies around her cozy French neighborhood looking for fluffy little squishy things. None of her friends among the shopkeepers has anything that exactly fills the bill, but she collects a series of oddments that come in surprisingly handy when she espies the perfect fluffy little squishy gift: “an adorable little creature” that looks like a hot pink Koosh ball with snout and tail. It’s a “present with a thousand uses” (“personal masseuse,” “amazing hat,” “decorative plant,” and more, according to the accompanying diagram). A series of swaps finds the fluffy little squishy ready to give to Eddie’s mother. Alemegna gives her 5-1/2-year-old protagonist a bright pink cape that stands out against the bricks and cobbles of the neighborhood and exactly matches her perfect gift. Adult readers may be puzzled never to find out exactly what her sister was really getting at, but both they and children will be utterly charmed by Eddie’s positive spirit and ingenuity. She and her neighborhood are rendered in hand-drawn lines and smudgy coloring that have a 1960s aesthetic; a slightly oversized trim befits her big heart.
An irrepressible heroine in an effervescent book. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59270-180-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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