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VEO, VEO, I SEE YOU

Name: VEO, VEO, I SEE YOU
Author: Lulu Delacre
ISBN: 9781665911917

by Lulu Delacre ; illustrated by Lulu Delacre ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 2023

Essentially kindhearted.

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Siblings Marisol and Pepito spot the essential workers in their neighborhood during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Thanks to the “bad virus” that closed the stores and restaurants, Mami can no longer cook at Rosita’s Café. Other people, however, do have to work. “Los muy necesarios,” says Mami, the essential workers who make sure there’s power, water, and food. On their way with Mami to deliver food and medicine to older family members, Marisol and Pepito play a game of I Spy (Veo, Veo) to identify all the essential workers in their neighborhood. “Veo, veo,” starts Marisol, “a trash collector! He has work!” Pepito sees Nurse Marco returning home from caring for sick people, and Marisol catches Vanessa and Victor hopping in the van that takes them to the chicken plant. All masked, the bus driver, firefighters, and landscaper are hard at work, too. Back at home, Marisol (“Now I see what I had not before”) makes a sign celebrating the essential workers. Delacre ingeniously sets up the game of Veo, Veo as a conversation between the siblings and Mami that alternates between English and Spanish, leveraging that back and forth to acknowledge the importance of each worker during the unprecedented pandemic lockdown. An author’s note further discloses that these essential workers “were disproportionately Black and Brown.” Fittingly, the collage artwork features a community full of Black and brown folks in a neighborhood rendered in effervescent colors and curved landscapes; the protagonists are brown-skinned and Latine. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Essentially kindhearted. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023

ISBN: 9781665911917

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: June 21, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S HEALTH & DAILY LIVING

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COOL GREEN
by Lulu Delacre ; illustrated by Lulu Delacre

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LUCI SOARS
by Lulu Delacre ; illustrated by Lulu Delacre

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RAFI AND ROSI MUSIC!
by Lulu Delacre ; illustrated by Lulu Delacre

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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TINY T. REX AND THE IMPOSSIBLE HUG

by Jonathan Stutzman ; illustrated by Jay Fleck ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019

Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.

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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)