A gentle story with clear messaging about kindness, empathy, and seeing beyond superficial differences.
A little boy whose skin changes color is bullied for being different in Tabb’s illustrated children’s book.
Sam is a third grader with an unusual condition: Like a chameleon, his skin turns different colors to match his surroundings. Sam has a few friends, but other kids mock and bully him. A girl laughs at a purple-skinned Sam when he asks if she wants to play. A boy calls him “weird” and “pushe[s] Sam’s bike over.” On his way home, Sam turns green. While he’s greeted appreciatively by his adoring little sister and supportive parents (“We love you just the way you are”), Sam is still sad, wishing he looked like “everyone else.” By not over-dramatizing Sam’s plight, Tabb strikes the right tone to invite readers’ empathy, then deftly turns things around by giving Sam agency over how he is perceived, having him dream that he’s saved from bullies by a bunch of chameleons. The heroic, color-shifting reptiles spark Sam’s fascination with the real thing. He learns about them (Tabb includes interesting chameleon facts), is given his own pet chameleon, and takes his pet to school. There, Sam’s informed presentation sparks his peers’ interest, and they see that Sam is a pretty cool kid, no matter what color he is. The chameleon theme is woven visually throughout the book; Tabb alerts her readers to spot the five chameleons that can be found on certain pages as part of the illustrations by Albert. These are done in an especially engaging style featuring expressive cartoonish characters in different skin tones (a couple of them are in wheelchairs), simple line drawings, and an assured balance of color and white space. The after-material includes questions for kids to ponder and a link to a website with activities.
A gentle story with clear messaging about kindness, empathy, and seeing beyond superficial differences.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798350969092
Page Count: 36
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
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
While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child...
Imani endures the insults heaped upon her by the other village children, but she never gives up her dreams.
The Masai girl is tiny compared to the other children, but she is full of imagination and perseverance. Luckily, she has a mother who believes in her and tells her stories that will fuel that imagination. Mama tells her about the moon goddess, Olapa, who wins over the sun god. She tells Imani about Anansi, the trickster spider who vanquishes a larger snake. (Troublingly, the fact that Anansi is a West African figure, not of the Masai, goes unaddressed in both text and author’s note.) Inspired, the tiny girl tries to find new ways to achieve her dream: to touch the moon. One day, after crashing to the ground yet again when her leafy wings fail, she is ready to forget her hopes. That night, she witnesses the adumu, the special warriors’ jumping dance. Imani wakes the next morning, determined to jump to the moon. After jumping all day, she reaches the moon, meets Olapa and receives a special present from the goddess, a small moon rock. Now she becomes the storyteller when she relates her adventure to Mama. The watercolor-and-graphite illustrations have been enhanced digitally, and the night scenes of storytelling and fantasy with their glowing stars and moons have a more powerful impact than the daytime scenes, with their blander colors.
While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child to be admired. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-934133-57-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Mackinac Island Press
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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