Offers helpful tools for starting difficult conversations with kids during a rapidly changing pandemic.
As a girl’s routine changes because of Covid-19, she adjusts to some things while others remain frightening in this picture book.
“One day Eva had to stay at home…and stay...and stay…” Eva’s small, pale-skinned face peers sadly toward the street; a calendar’s pages, covered with red X’s, fall to the floor in a two-page spread. The rules of daily life suddenly have shifted: Eva can’t go to school or the playground. She wears a mask and experiences trouble sleeping. Her parents explain that Covid-19 makes some people sicker than others and can kill. “Eva does her best at being patient” and paints, learns, and plays indoors. Angel’s evocative black-and-white photographs of an eerie neighborhood and empty grocery store shelves effectively document the pandemic’s early days. Simple digital cartoon additions to the photos populate yards with deer and illustrate an ambulance racing past a sign celebrating medical workers. During a period when charts communicate so much about the outbreak to adults, some visual allusions may require more clarification for young readers. For example, an orange President Donald Trump points fingers in two directions as a chart implicitly showing case rates appears behind him. Eva’s family doesn’t experience the extreme trauma others deal with, such as eviction. But the clear articulation of Eva’s anxieties and coping mechanisms may still be useful and relatable for many families struggling to address how the crisis has affected them.
Offers helpful tools for starting difficult conversations with kids during a rapidly changing pandemic.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7354264-0-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 10, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet.
A ghost longs to be scary, but none of the creepy personas she tries on fit.
Misty, a feline ghost with big green eyes and long whiskers, wants to be the frightening presence that her haunted house calls for, but sadly, she’s “too cute to be spooky.” She dons toilet paper to resemble a mummy, attempts to fly on a broom like a witch, and howls at the moon like a werewolf. Nothing works. She heads to a Halloween party dressed reluctantly as herself. When she arrives, her friends’ joyful screams reassure her that she’s great just as she is. Sadler’s message, though a familiar one, is delivered effectively in a charming, ghostly package. Misty truly is too precious to be frightening. Laberis depicts an endearingly spooky, all-animal cast—a frog witch, for instance, and a crocodilian mummy. Misty’s sidekick, a cheery little bat who lends support throughout, might be even more adorable than she is. Though Misty’s haunted house is filled with cobwebs and surrounded by jagged, leafless trees, the charming characters keep things from ever getting too frightening. The images will encourage lingering looks. Clearly, there’s plenty that makes Misty special just as she is—a takeaway that adults sharing the book with their little ones should be sure to drive home.
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593702901
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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