A timeless story of family secrets and healing.
Kumari shares the tale of a 7-year-old boy learning his family’s history in Kumari’s illustrated book for young readers.
Young Vivek visits his Daadi Maa (grandmotherin the Hindi language) on weekends. However, she always pinches his cheeks, criticizes his parents, and feeds him food with her homemade raisins, which he dislikes. One day, the annoyed boy decides to take Daadi Maa’s diary without permission: “He couldn’t have stopped himself even if he’d wanted to.” That night, Vivek hides under a blanket and eagerly opens the diary and begins to read. He learns of Daadi Maa’s upbringing in a poor farming family and reads about her brother Bhola, who spends time with a boy whom the very young Daadi Maa doesn’t like and calls “a crook.” Despite feeling a pang of guilt as he reads, Vivek continues and learns of a great tragedy—one that explains Daadi Maa’s habit of pinching cheeks. Later, Vivek and his mother visit Daadi Maa’s home; Vivek blurts out that he took her diary and begins asking questions about Bhola. Rather than being angry, Daadi Maa shares more details of her past and about her relationship with her son (Vivek’s late father), and she opens the door for a stronger bond between her, Vivek, and his mother. Over the course of the book, Vivek effectively broadens his understanding of his family members’ lives. Kumari offers young readers a poignant story that weaves together numerous Indian cultural elements, including raisin cake, traditional clothing, and Hindi terms. Daadi Maa’s story gradually unfolds through the characters’ words and those in her diary, which she kept as a young girl. Vivek’s thoughts and actions will be relatable to youngsters, and Shingre’s full-color cartoon illustrations are filled with vividness and detail; they complement the events of the story well.
A timeless story of family secrets and healing.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9798988420200
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Handy advice for perpetually inquisitive children.
Interior decorator and TV personality Gaines invites readers to open their eyes and exercise their imaginations.
There’s a world to be explored out there—and only children can really take part. What does “looking for wonder” entail? Slowing down and looking up, around, and everywhere. At the outset, a group of eager, racially diverse young friends—including one who uses a wheelchair—are fully prepared for a grand adventure. They offer tips about how and where to look: Why, there’s a “grand parade” of marching ants! And, these kids add, perspective is key. A rainy day might signal gloom to some, but to those filled with wonder, showers bring “magic puddles for play”; a forest is “an enchanted world,” the ocean conceals “a spectacular city,” and the night sky boasts “extraordinary sights.” The takeaway: “Wonder is never in short supply.” It’s a robust, empowering message, as is the exhortation to “keep your mind open, and let curiosity guide the way.” Youngsters are also advised to share their discoveries. The upbeat narrative is delivered in clunky verse, but the colorful cartoonish illustrations brimming with activity and good cheer (including some adorable anthropomorphized animals in the backgrounds) make up for the textual lapses and should motivate readers to embark on their own “wonder explorations.”
Handy advice for perpetually inquisitive children. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781400247417
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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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