Fun with a capital F, this tale goes out to all those workaholic kids who need some.
A visual treat for the observant.
Studious, bespectacled, all-about-business William, who presents white, has achieved five of his six goals for summer: earn Math Camp MVP, read 50 books, learn Spanish, obtain a black belt in karate, and perform a perfect guitar recital. But the sixth is a stumper: “have most fun ever!” He must also constantly ward off distractions from his gregarious, rambunctious neighbor Anna, a young, brown-skinned girl who keeps interrupting his serious attempts at fun with her harebrained make-believe play. Wearing wacky, hodgepodge outfits, she invites him on adventures, like jumping the Grand Canyon on their motorcycles “to escape from the GREEDY TOAD PIRATE who keeps trying to steal our TREASURE with his long, sticky tongue.” William’s homemade fun meter shows only the saddest face during his solo play while Anna’s activities make it grin broadly. Young readers will have a rollicking good time as they guess what the little girl next door will think up next. Sharp-eyed readers will also locate a curious host of entertaining animals that sobersides William fails to notice. Ceulemans’ delightfully inventive, fantastical crayon sketches divide Anna’s zany world from William’s matter-of-fact one, offering readers lots to notice and giggle about. By the conclusion, the animals and even William have been absorbed into Anna’s crayon-filled universe.
Fun with a capital F, this tale goes out to all those workaholic kids who need some. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4549-3097-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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