The counting concepts and comedy make this a perfect 100th day read-aloud.
The 100th day of school gets a lighthearted treatment in this debut rhyming picture book.
It’s the 100th day of school, but the class has only counted up to 93. The teacher is worried she’ll be fired, so the students put their heads together to figure out what days they missed. After recalling a number of chaotic days—the class pet’s escape, the field trip to the circus, the first snowfall, and more—the classmates arrive at a new total, but now they’ve hit 101. After the poor teacher faints, the students use all their counting strategies to add up the right number of days. The teacher shows her appreciation, and the class assures her: “You can count on us!” There is no shortage of books celebrating the 100th day of school, but Reistad, a librarian, captures perfectly how busy school days can escape a careful count—and how teamwork helps the students celebrate both the fun they’ve had and the class they love. The rhyming text flows smoothly and seamlessly integrates math vocabulary (“digit,” “sum,” “abacus”). Veteran illustrator Barber skillfully creates amusing illustrations, as seen in his Nobody Likes a Booger (2017), and here, that humor is particularly present in the teacher’s expressions and body language. The students are a diverse group ethnically, but they are identical in their positive attitudes and willingness to help their beleaguered instructor.
The counting concepts and comedy make this a perfect 100th day read-aloud.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64343-987-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots.
Poems on various topics by the actor/screenwriter and his kids.
In collaboration with his now-grown children—particularly daughter Erin, who adds gently humorous vignettes and spot art to each entry—Bob Odenkirk, best known for his roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, dishes up a poetic hodgepodge that is notably loose jointed in the meter and rhyme departments. The story also too often veers from child-friendly subjects (bedtime-delaying tactics, sympathy for a dog with the zoomies) to writerly whines (“The be-all and end-all of perfection in scribbling, / no matter and no mind to any critical quibbling”). Some of the less-than-compelling lines describe how a “plane ride is an irony / with a strange and wondrous duplicity.” A few gems are buried in the bunch, however, like the comforting words offered to a bedroom monster and a frightened invisible friend, not to mention an invitation from little Willy Whimble, who lives in a tuna can but has a heart as “big as can be. / Come inside, / stay for dinner. / I’ll roast us a pea!” They’re hard to find, though. Notwithstanding nods to Calef Brown, Shel Silverstein, and other gifted wordsmiths in the acknowledgments, the wordplay in general is as artificial as much of the writing: “I scratched, then I scrutched / and skrappled away, / scritching my itch with great / pan-a-ché…” Human figures are light-skinned throughout.
A lackluster collection of verse enlivened by a few bright spots. (Poetry. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780316438506
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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