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BONNIE'S NEW OLD OUTFIT

Name: BONNIE'S NEW OLD OUTFIT
Author: Madison Moore
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1010-0

by Madison Moore ; illustrated by Danielle Bennett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2022

With Earth awash in throwaway fashion, here’s a welcome focus on one family’s creative upcycling.

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With the help of her resourceful family, Bonnie embellishes used clothing to create a perfect first-day-of-school outfit.

Whether from the attic, the thrift store, or her own closet, the clothes Bonnie assembles are stained, worn out, or too big or small. Her older sister, Emilia, sympathizes and leads her to her own closet to demonstrate how she’s revamped older clothes by patching, hemming, and dyeing them. She shows Bonnie how to dye clothing and old sneakers with blueberries and onion skins. Bonnie asks her grandfather, a knitter, for help, and after a couple of days of tutelage, the pair have two new patches, “one neat and tidy and one new and scraggly.” As Mom prepares to alter Bonnie’s “too-big and too-small” clothing, Bonnie notices Mom’s embroidered shirt and soon learns to thread a needle and stitch simple patterns on socks and T-shirts. Finally, Bonnie’s back-to-school wardrobe is ready, each piece enhanced with the help of her clever family members—and a few crafty, sparkly additions of her own. Bonnie and Emilia are brown-skinned, their mother presents as Black, and their grandfather is light-skinned. While facial expressions aren’t especially detailed, familial scenes of collaborative work cheerfully extend the story. Final pages briefly discuss natural dyes, embroidery, knitting, and accessorizing. By highlighting one child’s personal expression, Moore removes the stigma from secondhand clothing. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

With Earth awash in throwaway fashion, here’s a welcome focus on one family’s creative upcycling. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022

ISBN: 978-0-8075-1010-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Whitman

Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
MORE THAN JUST A GAME
by Madison Moore ; illustrated by Lonnie Ollivierre

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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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IMANI'S MOON

by JaNay Brown-Wood ; illustrated by Hazel Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014

While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child...

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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)