A cheeky tale worth crowing about.
Barnyard animals attempt to hire a new rooster.
A cow seeks a “focused and undistracted rooster who will get this farm back on track.” But the applicants have their own ideas. A white-feathered, caffeine-loving chicken offers to wake the farm animals up with freshly brewed coffee. “It will never work for us,” responds Cow. The other candidates include an inexplicably tuxedo-clad rooster who wants to ring a bell instead of crowing, a small brown bird whose lack of farm experience quickly becomes evident, and a translucent green blob who speaks a language Cow can’t understand. At last, the farm’s original rooster wakes up and crows; “the roostering part of being a rooster” isn’t very demanding, so he’s been devoting his time to playing music, which keeps him up late. The “solution” to ensuring that a rooster crows every morning will have grown-ups chuckling about the inefficiencies of the workplace. Illustrations dominated by rich reds and browns and cool blues bring the setting to life. Stegmaier gives this farmyard a clever modern flair; the cow is dressed in overalls and boots, her hair in a topknot, while the “extremely cool and helpful sheep” who narrates is clad in a sweater and a pleated skirt. While the jokes about the trials and tribulations of the job market may be lost on younger readers, kids will nevertheless giggle at the expressive animals and whimsical artwork.
A cheeky tale worth crowing about. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 18, 2024
ISBN: 9780451476838
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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