The joys of collecting, artfully conveyed.
A tour of collections great and small.
Readers are instructed to flick a switch on the opening page, literally shedding light on an unseen narrator’s collection of neatly displayed “small things,” including a puzzle piece, a snail, a paper clip, and a button. Woollvin’s fetchingly stencil-like, glowing graphics imbue most objects, even inanimate ones, with lively eyes, as in her Little Red (2016). Next up is a collection of “BIG things”—an elephant, a whale, and a car—spilling off the page. Quick, help the narrator “squash them back in!” Whew! The narrator shows off a collection of “pointy things” and then one of “prickly things” (“Expert collectors know the difference”), followed by a “most exciting” collection of rocks. Every page invites reader participation: Kids are asked to blow away cobwebs, grab an errant spider, sniff the pungent offerings in the “stinky collection,” and sort a variety of especially delicate objects (“Gently does it!”). Uh-oh: You dropped the narrator’s teapot! But don’t worry; it soon finds a new home in the collection of broken things. And hey, there’s that spider! Readers successfully corral it, and the narrator adds it to a “many-legs” collection labeled “DO NOT LET US OUT.” The last page encourages youngsters to become collectors themselves, but they won’t need much convincing; Woollvin’s quirky, conversational text and artwork will have already persuaded them to follow suit.
The joys of collecting, artfully conveyed. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781836004660
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color.
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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