A mouthwatering, heartwarming story of teamwork.
A delightful account of helpfulness, plans placed on hold, and disappointment avoided.
Each year, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, Lola’s parents make and sell apple pies from their orchard store. Lola wants to help by preparing Thanksgiving dinner herself. She has all the right ideas, like organizing a daily schedule to get the advance prep done, and an eagerness to take responsibility. But each morning, as she consults her projected list—peel potatoes, snap green beans, cut carrots—she notices that her parents need her help with their task that day. Charles takes readers step by step through the pie-making process. Day One is devoted to making the bottom crust: Dad weighs and mixes the flour, Mom portions out the dough, and then Dad presses it into a pan—with assistance from Lola. In the following days, the family works on the top crust and peels and cores the apples. Finally, each family member helps with baking and selling. The job all done, Lola is “too pooped to mash, and too tuckered to cook.” So what about dinner? Then her extended family arrives, bearing contributions, and everyone pitches in, because “big jobs sure work better with a little help.” An author’s note describes the real-world model for the farm; a pie recipe and photos are appended. Warm, slightly idealized pastel illustrations add autumnal spice to this sweet book. While the protagonists are light-skinned, the farm’s clientele is diverse.
A mouthwatering, heartwarming story of teamwork. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781534112735
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child...
Imani endures the insults heaped upon her by the other village children, but she never gives up her dreams.
The Masai girl is tiny compared to the other children, but she is full of imagination and perseverance. Luckily, she has a mother who believes in her and tells her stories that will fuel that imagination. Mama tells her about the moon goddess, Olapa, who wins over the sun god. She tells Imani about Anansi, the trickster spider who vanquishes a larger snake. (Troublingly, the fact that Anansi is a West African figure, not of the Masai, goes unaddressed in both text and author’s note.) Inspired, the tiny girl tries to find new ways to achieve her dream: to touch the moon. One day, after crashing to the ground yet again when her leafy wings fail, she is ready to forget her hopes. That night, she witnesses the adumu, the special warriors’ jumping dance. Imani wakes the next morning, determined to jump to the moon. After jumping all day, she reaches the moon, meets Olapa and receives a special present from the goddess, a small moon rock. Now she becomes the storyteller when she relates her adventure to Mama. The watercolor-and-graphite illustrations have been enhanced digitally, and the night scenes of storytelling and fantasy with their glowing stars and moons have a more powerful impact than the daytime scenes, with their blander colors.
While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child to be admired. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934133-57-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Mackinac Island Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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