A charming and creative take on adapting to life with anxiety.
The diminutive hero introduced in Small Knight and the Angry Prince (2023) returns for a more personal adventure.
Pale-skinned, brave Small Knight (who uses they/them pronouns) and their trusted companion, Tiny Bear (plush but seemingly sentient), explore a cave aglow with shining crystals but wind up falling asleep. Some taller knights bring the little human back to the palace, where the queen is waiting, but where is Tiny Bear? As Small Knight frets, a jar breaks, and the Anxiety Monster (captured offscreen at the beginning of the book) emerges. Small Knight stands up to the monster, depicted as coalesced ink scribbles with horns. But as Small Knight unsuccessfully looks for Tiny Bear, their fears mount and the monster grows. The child decides to search the cave and commands the beast to accompany them. But the Anxiety Monster begins to worry, too, and Small Knight reassures it. This back-and-forth defines the youngster’s relationship to the monster and to anxiety itself—at times it can be overcome, but sometimes it’s in control. When all are safe again, the Anxiety Monster shrinks, and Small Knight finds a cozier yet still secure home for it. In the author’s note, Kasha discusses the challenges of coping with anxiety. Accompanied by quaint, atmospherically fantastical watercolor-and-ink illustrations, her story offers an accessible depiction of doing so, which many readers will find validating. Small Knight and the queen are light-skinned; the other knights are darker-skinned.
A charming and creative take on adapting to life with anxiety. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250856999
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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