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SATURDAY AT THE FOOD PANTRY

Name: SATURDAY AT THE FOOD PANTRY
Author: Diane O'Neill
ISBN: 978-0-8075-7236-8

by Diane O'Neill ; illustrated by Brizida Magro ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2021

Eminently helpful, affirming, and necessary.

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A trip to a food pantry allows a child to both give and receive help.

While many children’s books about food pantries and soup kitchens focus on how children can help others, this story places a child in need at its center. Molly (who presents as a girl of color with light brown skin and full, wavy brown hair) and her mother (who has lighter skin and straight, dark hair) are experiencing food insecurity, as evidenced by the paltry items in the illustrations of their kitchen and Molly’s grumbling belly when she goes to bed at night. Her mother tells her that they are going to get groceries at a food pantry—a place they’ve never before visited. When they arrive, they join a line of people waiting, including Molly’s classmate Caitlin, who is embarrassed to be seen there. “Everybody needs help sometimes,” Molly’s mother has told her, and she finds Caitlin’s evident sense of shame confusing. Molly passes time by drawing pictures, an activity Caitlin joins when others in line request drawings. They come to see their art making as a way of helping others, just as the good food in the food pantry, including a treat of cookies, helps them. Magro’s naïve illustrations emphasize her racially diverse characters’ faces, expressions of concern far fewer than smiles in emphasis of the book’s theme.

Eminently helpful, affirming, and necessary. (author's note) (Picture book. 3-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-8075-7236-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Whitman

Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)