Terrific fun with a shrewd hero.
A resourceful newsboy finds his fortune.
The boy works multiple other jobs (“he was also the chimney sweep, the shoe shiner, and the milkman”—he’s told this is a “fair arrangement”) for the town of Bad Göodsburg. One day, he delivers troubling news: The wishing well is broken! The baker, the shopkeeper, and the doctor are particularly incensed, since they’ve each made a selfless wish—or so they claim. When the boy investigates, he discovers that a large spider now occupies the well and appears to have gathered the coins (and presumably the wishes) for itself. The spider tells the boy that the supposedly altruistic baker, shopkeeper, and doctor actually made selfish wishes, and the enterprising boy cleverly leverages this information for a better deal from the town, plus a big pile of gold coins. Hannigan’s lighthearted block printing–style art, featuring naïve, slightly blobby characters, complements the droll, deceptively simple folktale-esque narrative. Bold pages with white text set against black backgrounds introduce each section of the brief narrative, supplying both dramatic pacing and sly humor. The unprincipled townsfolk get their just deserts, and the glimpse of the now very cranky spider at the end is the cherry on top of a very diverting sundae.
Terrific fun with a shrewd hero. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780063289475
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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 comical, fresh look at crayons and color.
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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