A worthwhile fable for sporty, ambitious young readers.
A young Black girl used to taking home first prizes must adjust to someone else getting the gold in this picture book.
“The amazingly talented Jackie J. Spade, a star in the making in just the sixth grade,” has a big race coming up, but she’s not worried. Already a prizewinner in karate and ice skating, dark-skinned, Afro puff–wearing Jackie also “swings a mean bat” and wins spelling bees, science fairs, and chess matches. Readers get little information about Jackie outside of Ferguson’s brisk, rhyming verse about her long streak of achievements, but her smile is bright. Debut illustrator Aryutova’s well-composed digital images in warm tones and textures show happy, adorable Jackie excitedly accepting awards. How will all this victory inform Jackie’s reaction to the inevitable loss? When a Black girl wins first place in the 200-meter dash and Jackie gets second, it’s a horrible shock. A crying Jackie collapses in an effective two-page spread that offers opportunities for conversations between adult readers and children about her feelings. But then Jackie “dusts herself off and wipes tears from her face / she walks right on over and says ‘good race!’ ” The value of sports for all competitors—not to mention Jackie’s hard work—could have been emphasized in the story a little more. Still, the cheerful championing of good sportsmanship among peers and the depiction of mutual recognition and encouragement between young Black girls make this a satisfying tale.
A worthwhile fable for sporty, ambitious young readers.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-75221-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: F. Ferguson Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hilarious autumnal comedy of errors.
A confused squirrel overreacts to the falling autumn leaves.
Relaxing on a tree branch, Squirrel admires the red, gold, and orange leaves. Suddenly Squirrel screams, “One of my leaves is…MISSING!” Searching for the leaf, Squirrel tells Bird, “Someone stole my leaf!” Spying Mouse sailing in a leaf boat, Squirrel asks if Mouse stole the leaf. Mouse calmly replies in the negative. Bird reminds Squirrel it’s “perfectly normal to lose a leaf or two at this time of year.” Next morning Squirrel panics again, shrieking, “MORE LEAVES HAVE BEEN STOLEN!” Noticing Woodpecker arranging colorful leaves, Squirrel queries, “Are those my leaves?” Woodpecker tells Squirrel, “No.” Again, Bird assures Squirrel that no one’s taking the leaves and that the same thing happened last year, then encourages Squirrel to relax. Too wired to relax despite some yoga and a bath, the next day Squirrel cries “DISASTER” at the sight of bare branches. Frantic now, Squirrel becomes suspicious upon discovering Bird decorating with multicolored leaves. Is Bird the culprit? In response, Bird shows Squirrel the real Leaf Thief: the wind. Squirrel’s wildly dramatic, misguided, and hyperpossessive reaction to a routine seasonal event becomes a rib-tickling farce through clever use of varying type sizes and weights emphasizing his absurd verbal pronouncements as well as exaggerated, comic facial expressions and body language. Bold colors, arresting perspectives, and intense close-ups enhance Squirrel’s histrionics. Endnotes explain the science behind the phenomenon.
A hilarious autumnal comedy of errors. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-3520-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
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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