A worldwide whirlwind that misses the mark.
A stuffed animal and a stick travel around the world by mistake.
Huggie, a blue stuffed animal, and Stick, a wooden stick with a face, arms, and legs, fall out of their boy owner’s backpack into the ocean. They narrate in diary entries, taking turns. Stick’s an eternal optimist, cheerful and oblivious, calling pirates “nice guys in super awesome hats.” In contrast, Huggie’s grumpy, realistic, and perpetually annoyed. Spencer’s pen-and-ink–and-digital art is full of sharp lines and angles, emphasizing exaggerated perspectives and expressions. As the accidental adventurers hop from continent to continent, the places they visit fall into disturbing categories. Australia, Asia, and Africa feature wilderness and animals but neither humans nor industrialization, while Europe and North America feature humans, industrialization, and news media. South America (in text, not pictures) has people who use Stick “as a blowgun to shoot at monkeys and sloths all morning.” Such coding breathes new life into old, inexcusable messages about race and culture. Humor for the butt-jokes crowd and playfulness (“sharks are allergic to stuffed animals”) can’t outweigh the deplorable Western-centric attitudes and one massive geographical misstep: The protagonists fall off an African coast on the right-hand side of a spread into the Atlantic. This misleads readers who don’t know geography yet and confuses those who do. (An only-somewhat-clarifying map on the closing endpapers does not mitigate this fault.) Moreover, the suspension of disbelief demanded by the story is so staggeringly large that it’s distancing.
A worldwide whirlwind that misses the mark. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-17276-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share.
In this latest in the series, Little Blue Truck, driven by pal Toad, is challenged to a countryside race by Racer Red, a sleek, low-slung vehicle.
Blue agrees, and the race is on. Although the two start off “hood to hood / and wheel to wheel,” they switch positions often as they speed their way over dusty country roads. Blue’s farm friends follow along to share in the excitement and shout out encouragement; adult readers will have fun voicing the various animal sounds. Short rhyming verses on each page and several strategic page turns add drama to the narrative, but soft, mottled effects in the otherwise colorful illustrations keep the competition from becoming too intense. Racer Red crosses the finish line first, but Blue is a gracious loser, happy to have worked hard. That’s a new concept for Racer Red, who’s laser-focused on victory but takes Blue’s words (“win or lose, it’s fun to try!”) to heart—a revelation that may lead to worthwhile storytime discussions. When Blue’s farm animal friends hop into the truck for the ride home, Racer Red tags along and learns a second lesson, one about speed. “Fast is fun, / and slow is too, / as long as you’re / with friends.”
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063387843
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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