A fun, laugh-out-loud journey through a child’s imagination with wacky illustrations—a delight for all.
A young girl takes her family along for a wild ride through her imagination as she dreams up increasingly weird—and hilarious—scenarios.
An unnamed little girl sits at the dinner table with her family. As her mother urges her to eat, the girl instead asks questions that always begin with the prompt, “Would it be weird….” For example, she wonders, “Would it be weird if my mouth was a piano? And then, every time I brushed my teeth, everyone would cheer and clap!” In response to these increasingly elaborate questions, the girl’s mother is always ready with a response: “Yes, that wouldbe weird…. Wewould be so proud of you! We would even find a dentist who fixes pianos.” After the little girl, who has medium brown skin and bright green eyes, exhausts her mother with her questions (that involve everything from sharks in an epic dance battle to Egyptian mummies in pursuit to alien makeovers), she gets ready for bed and realizes she has one more question…but this time, for her dad. Epelbaum’s illustrations include bold lines and bright colors, giving the book an almost comic book–style flair that’s endearingly absurd (like the family dog using its eye lasers to blast a giant anthropomorphic slice of pizza). Both the text and illustrations infuse the story with a joyous feeling. It’s ultimately an exuberant ode to childhood, creativity, and family, and a pleasure to read for kids and adults.
A fun, laugh-out-loud journey through a child’s imagination with wacky illustrations—a delight for all.Pub Date: March 26, 2024
ISBN: 9781961166035
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Nextcore
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
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
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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