A loving portrayal of a never-forgotten connection with the natural world.
Matt, his sister, Katie, and his best friend, Pablo, revive a pond in the woods and enjoy it throughout the seasons.
Gorgeous, softly colored illustrations add to the magic of this remembered experience. Done in acrylics, colored pencil, and opaque ink and accurate in their nature detail, they fill each double-page spread. Before and after scenes on the endpapers reveal the neighboring suburbs and city beyond, but, except for Matt’s first venture out of his yard before the title page, the artist concentrates on the pond: its discovery, cleaning and rebuilding, the weather, the bugs, the old rowboat, the birds, and the joys of being in and around the water. Katie collects feathers to make the necklace she wears throughout the summer, reads about the creatures they encounter, and shares what she’s learned. A grand, wordless spread looks down on the children enjoying their pond, inviting readers into this idyllic world. There's a campout to end the summer, skating in the winter, and a slim plot involving a heart-shaped piece of blue quartz. Matt and Katie are white, and Pablo has darker hair and skin; these are the Wisconsin children of the author-illustrator’s childhood. (Is it the adult artist painting the pond on the final page?)
A loving portrayal of a never-forgotten connection with the natural world. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-4735-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Paula Wiseman/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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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