A comforting holiday story about sustaining tradition while making room for new beginnings.
When Lucía’s family moves to chilly Ohio from sunny Puerto Rico, the child worries about how the Three Kings will find them now that they’re so far away.
In January, Puerto Rico is full of green, from the grass to the leaves on the trees. Usually, Lucía collects these gifts for the camels ridden by the Three Kings, who once visited Jesus at his birth and who now visit children on Three Kings’ Day each year. But now that Lucía lives in snowy, gray Ohio, it’s unclear whether the Three Kings will be able to come at all. Will the camels eat arugula from the grocery store? When morning arrives, Lucía finds mallorcas baked by Mama and gifts left by the Three Kings—and the family calls Abuela and the cousins back in Puerto Rico. Lucía observes Three Kings’ Day just as the family did in Puerto Rico and celebrates a new path and life. The illustrations of Puerto Rico are vibrant, contrasting with the cooler palette depicting Ohio. During the Three Kings’ Day celebration, however, the saturation returns, bringing the beauty of the island to the mainland. Lucía and the family are brown-skinned and brown-haired. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A comforting holiday story about sustaining tradition while making room for new beginnings. (more information on Three Kings’ Day) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781662620379
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Astra Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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