Inspiring messages of confidence-building and positivity, with a lively, relatable kid at the center.
In Dunsen-White’s chapter book for early readers, fifth-grader Johari is excited to present his entry in the school’s story-writing contest.
Johari is about to compete in a story-writing contest, reading his original story to an audience of his peers from three fifth-grade classrooms. He is nervous, too: His story is the last to be presented before the judging for first place begins, and, hearing the loud applause the student before him just received, he can tell her story was a big hit. Johari’s mystery adventure, starring “Johari the Great” as a superhero detective, is about solving a case involving teachers disappearing from his elementary school. Can it take the top prize? And will his fellow students and teachers understand the twist ending that Johari is so proud of? In this chapter book featuring Black characters, the author delivers clear messages about the value of validation and support from caregivers and teachers like Johari’s, who encourage students to explore self-expression and creative thinking. Dunsen-White crafts Johari’s “greatest adventure story ever” as a tale-within-a-tale, deftly illustrating how the fifth-grader uses his imagination to come up with ideas and put them all together. Throughout, Johari’s sense of accomplishment, affirmed by his caring parents (his dad’s daily send-off: “Make this your best day yet, Little Man.…learn something new and do something great!”) comes through naturally, page after page. Visually, the text is clear and well-spaced, as are the spot drawings and a few half-page and full-page illustrations rendered by White in pleasing saturated colors and clean lines. The book ends with two sets of questions: one for reading comprehension, the other intended to launch readers’ own creative thinking (“What do you think is ‘bubbling up’ inside of you?”).
Inspiring messages of confidence-building and positivity, with a lively, relatable kid at the center.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2021
ISBN: 9781955154055
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Valley Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 7, 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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