A gentle, charming, and encouraging tale about bravely growing up.
A palm tree learns that letting go of things he no longer needs can be helpful to others in this illustrated children’s book.
Baby Palm, Daddy Palm, and Grandma Palm live together on a beautiful island in the Caribbean. Every full moon, humans arrive to collect old fronds that the trees have dropped, but Baby Palm doesn’t want to abandon his. “When I let my old ones go, I make room for new fronds to grow,” observes Daddy Palm, but Baby Palm clings tightly to what he knows. As the humans come month after month, Baby Palm notices one woman’s shape changing; she’s going to have a baby. When there are sounds of celebration over the hill, Baby Palm wants to know what’s going on, but Daddy Palm says he’ll have to grow tall enough to find out for himself. Curiosity wins out and Baby Palm decides he’s ready: He drops his fronds and realizes it really doesn’t hurt at all. As the months pass, Baby Palm grows, and soon he sees that his old fronds have become a crib for the human baby. Told in simple, accessible language, this series opener presents a clear metaphor for children discarding things they no longer need—whether that means not being afraid to lose their teeth or deciding to give up an old toy (as suggested in the end pages). But while the parallel is distinct, Mir’s engaging story is never heavy-handed. Like Daddy Palm and Grandma Palm, the tale remains patient as Baby Palm works out his willingness to release his old fronds at his own speed. Kamieniecki’s basic dot-and-line faces for the palm trees contrast with the more complex expressions of the brown-skinned humans, but both deftly communicate the emotions of the characters. There are also hidden pictures on each page, described in the endnotes, offering young readers a reason to go back and pore over the story. The scientific explanations about the relationship between humans and palm trees should be as much fun for adults as they are for children.
A gentle, charming, and encouraging tale about bravely growing up.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953887-04-7
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Mir House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 solid if message-driven conversation starter about the hard parts of learning.
Children realize their dreams one step at a time in this story about growth mindset.
A child crashes and damages a new bicycle on a dark, rainy day. Attempting a wheelie, the novice cyclist falls onto the sidewalk, grimacing, and, having internalized this setback as failure, vows to never ride again but to “walk…forever.” Then the unnamed protagonist happens upon a glowing orb in the forest, a “thought rearranger-er”—a luminous pink fairy called the Magical Yet. This Yet reminds the child of past accomplishments and encourages perseverance. The second-person rhyming couplets remind readers that mistakes are part of learning and that with patience and effort, children can achieve. Readers see the protagonist learn to ride the bike before a flash-forward shows the child as a capable college graduate confidently designing a sleek new bike. This book shines with diversity: racial, ethnic, ability, and gender. The gender-indeterminate protagonist has light brown skin and exuberant curly locks; Amid the bustling secondary cast, one child uses a prosthesis, and another wears hijab. At no point in the text is the Yet defined as a metaphor for a growth mindset; adults reading with younger children will likely need to clarify this abstract lesson. The artwork is powerful and detailed—pay special attention to the endpapers that progress to show the Yet at work.
A solid if message-driven conversation starter about the hard parts of learning. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-02562-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
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