A worthwhile but uneven tale about building self-confidence.
In this debut picture book, a girl learns to turn a downward spiral into a chance to boost her self-esteem.
Kimmy is an elementary schooler with a self-confidence problem. When her teacher Miss Jones declares that the class will spend the day writing poetry, Kimmy thinks: “Kimmy can’t, Kimmy can’t, Kimmy can’t.” Later, the same thing happens when Kimmy’s gym teacher takes everybody through a lesson on cartwheels. Kimmy watches as all her classmates make their attempts and seemingly succeed. But when she tries, she falls and gets caught in her negative thought cycle once again. After Miss Jones announces that it’s time for a math flash-card exercise, Kimmy is too afraid to even attempt it. Miss Jones finally approaches her and asks her a single question that turns Kimmy’s whole worldview on its head. From then on, Kimmy is inspired to believe in herself and be more confident than ever before. Heath’s tale is somewhat less inspired than Kimmy herself, as its core lesson is valuable but its text and plot are rather sparse. The story moves quickly and lacks detailed descriptions. Yet its pivotal moment will prove a useful tool for people of all ages to have in their arsenals when confronted with low self-esteem issues. Hatton’s simple illustrations feature a diverse cast with a variety of skin tones. Unfortunately, the pictures confusingly include a yellow cat in attendance at Kimmy’s classes, with no explanation in the text or images.
A worthwhile but uneven tale about building self-confidence. (Picture book for ages 3-4)Pub Date: June 29, 2023
ISBN: 9781838757335
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Nightingale Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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