A useful lesson about responsibility packaged as a delightful fairy tale.
A girl learns the importance of responsibility in Shadrick’s debut picture book.
Lisbeth, who has light brown skin and dark brown hair, is very excited to spend the day with her brother Christopher and her Grandma, but first her unruly hair must be untangled. Grandma tells Lisbeth that the tangles come from a group of ladybugs—Lana, Lola, and Laney—who threw a party in Lisbeth’s hair overnight. Lola is scared of thunderstorms, so to soothe her Lana suggests they organize a grand gala. (“No one can stay sad for very long when they are dancing.”) They recruit other ladybugs to make decorations, play music, and design stunning outfits for attendees to wear. They have a lovely time at their party, dancing until the streamers are tangled and the sun comes up. But the streamers are Lisbeth’s hair, and the ladybugs depart in such a hurry to beat the sunrise that they leave a mess behind them. Grandma urges Lisbeth to take responsibility for keeping her hair knot-free, even if the mess isn’t her own. Their relationship, as well as the resulting etiquette lesson, comes alive naturally in Shadrick’s text. (The only drawback is the ladybugs’ names all beginning with the letter L, which makes it tricky to distinguish them.) Penzlik’s charming illustrations are reminiscent of a child’s drawings, amplified to create a detailed, rainbow-colored world where ladybugs live inside a flower, dress like Frida Kahlo, and dance through the night.
A useful lesson about responsibility packaged as a delightful fairy tale.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9798991234009
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2024
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
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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