A small girl learns to accept herself as she is in a story told in simple and engaging words and imaginative pictures.
A picture book tells children that no matter what your size, you are perfect the way you are.
In Winterberg’s (Fifteen Feet of Time, 2013) book, Tamia wants to figure out if she is small or not. In a simple question-and-answer format, she asks various creatures about her size. A big creature with yellow fur says: “Small? You? You are smaller than small! You are teeny-weeny!” Tamia puts her question to others, including a crescent moon, who answers, “Tiny? You? You are microscopic!" About halfway through the story, she begins to ask a different question: “Am I big?” Scaling down from the large creatures she approached at first, Tamia turns to a turtle, a flower, a ladybug and a small green worm. The worm, sticking out of an apple, tells Tamia, “You are gigantic!” In a magnificent realization, Tamia sees that size is relative. “I’ve got it!” Tamia says, “I’m everything, and if I’m everything, I’m also: just right!” On their own, children may find it a bit difficult to read Winterberg’s words, which often appear on top of illustrations and can be hard to discern, but adults should have no trouble reading the story to them. Wichmann’s detailed and dreamlike illustrations complement the simple messages of the book: Accept yourself as you are, no matter what your size, and you don’t have to compare yourself to others in order to be special. In addition to Tamia’s curly hair and her zany red hat, each page has details children may want to study. On one page, these include an image of a green turtle floating in a pond alongside a duck wearing water wings. Some of the pictures are so fanciful they can be a challenge to decipher, but that may add to their appeal for children who enjoy lingering over pages full of magical creatures and whimsical details.
A small girl learns to accept herself as she is in a story told in simple and engaging words and imaginative pictures.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492309772
Page Count: 28
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.
Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.
This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.
Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-544-93809-0
Page Count: 16
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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