Chicken and Owl’s solution is ingenious and makes one wonder where the word “birdbrain” ever came from.
A simple comedy of errors takes place when a chicken and an owl find their waking hours at odds.
“Deep in the woods, there are two houses. Chicken lives in the house with the red roof. No one lives in the house with the blue roof.” When Kishira talks red and blue, she means the kind of red and blue paints deployed in elementary school art classes circa 1958: saturated and primary as primary can be. (The houses, true to form, are lemon yellow, and Takabatake’s linework is good and wobbly.) When mail starts being delivered to the house with the blue roof, Chicken is stoked: “He enjoys living on his own, but sometimes he feels lonely.” Since no one answers the door, Chicken leaves a note, which is promptly responded to by Owl, the newcomer. Happy to make new friends, he writes that he will visit the next day. For Chicken, day is day, when the sun is out, but for Owl, day is night, when the moon is out. One is waiting, waiting, waiting; the other wonders if it is too early to drop in. This is the kind of bafflement young readers will gratifyingly pick up right away; they will smugly feel they have the drop on Chicken and Owl.
Chicken and Owl’s solution is ingenious and makes one wonder where the word “birdbrain” ever came from. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77147-071-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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