A little absurd, a little breezy, this rhyming story helps make rhyming easy.
In this illustrated children’s book, a young rock believes he cannot rhyme—but he underestimates his own prowess.
Ricky, a rock wrapped in vines who wears a rainbow feather on his head, attends a school populated exclusively by other irregularly shaped gray stones that come in an intriguing range of sizes. Ricky loves school—until his reading and writing teacher introduces rhyming. She does this by calling up several imaginary scenarios—“oodles of poodles and noodles,” a bear eating an eclair—which confuse Ricky and leave the fundamental concept fuzzy. Ricky’s friend Tess follows him as they roll home through farmland, trying to coax her pal into experimenting with verse—which he does, albeit accidentally: “Can you think of a word that would rhyme with that Cow?” / “I don’t want to right now.” After several explosions of accidental rhyme, Ricky figures out that he can, in fact, compose verse (“Ricky then realized not trying was wrong— / He had no idea he could rhyme all along!”). He presents a tale of his own journey to his teacher the following day (“I’ve finished my story, and it’s really sublime, / Called ‘Ricky, the Rock That Just Couldn’t Rhyme’ ”). Young readers will find Mr. Jay’s rhythmic pattern of couplets comforting, and the narrative neatly gives beginning students of rhyme plenty of examples to work with. An ending stanza that cuts off without resolving its rhyme invites readers to finish the piece. Wozniak’s sharp-lined pictures are mostly black and white, except for gray rocks, Ricky’s feather, and all rhyming items in the characters’ surroundings—for example, the duck on a truck that is stuck in the muck.
A little absurd, a little breezy, this rhyming story helps make rhyming easy.Pub Date: March 1, 2023
ISBN: 9781958514061
Page Count: 32
Publisher: New Paige Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Haphazard but jolly enough for one outing; it probably won’t last for more.
A flurry of mail addressed to Duncan’s crayons ushers in the Christmas season in this novelty spinoff of the bestselling The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) and The Day the Crayons Came Home (2015).
Actual cards and letters are tucked into envelopelike pouches pasted to the pages; these are joined in some cases by other ephemera for a package that is likely to invite sudden, intense play followed by loss and/or damage that will render the book a disappointment to reread. That’s probably OK, as in contrast to the clever story that kicked this small series off, this outing has a hastily composed feel that lacks cohesion. The first letter is addressed to Peach from Mom and includes a paper doll of the “naked” (de-wrappered) crayon along with a selection of tabbed changes of clothing that includes a top hat and tails and a bikini top and bottom. Peach’s implied gender fluidity does not mitigate the unfortunate association of peach with skin color established in the first book. The sense of narrative improvisation is cemented with an early page turn that takes the crayons from outdoors snow play to “Feeling…suddenly very Christmas-y, the crayons headed inside.” Readers can unpack a box of punch-out decorations; a recipe for gluten-free Christmas cookies that begins “go to store and buy gluten-free cookies”; a punch-out dreidel (turns out Grey is Jewish); a board game (“six-sided die” not included); and a map of Esteban (aka Pea Green) and Neon Red’s travels with Santa.
Haphazard but jolly enough for one outing; it probably won’t last for more. (Novelty. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51574-6
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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