A disappointing addition to an already-full shelf
Bright yet busy illustrations light up this nighttime story.
Bedtime stories that feature animals and the moon are all too familiar, and this book does not stand out from the pack. Pencil-and-digital illustrations depict animals from all over the world, making noises and moving about as the moon rises and sets in the night sky. The primarily purple, red, and blue palette is eye-catching, as is the attention to textures and patterns. However, the text leaves readers with more questions than answers: How can the moon move simultaneously over the Northern and Southern hemispheres? Why are diurnal animals included, such as lions, monkeys, penguins, and meerkats, in what should be a nocturnal menagerie? Why are these animals together at the end when they live on different continents? And why do they then say hello to the setting moon; shouldn’t they bid the moon goodbye? In addition, the stars shine brightly throughout the text, but at dusk and dawn, stars are less visible than they are in darkest night. Furthermore, some of the animals don’t make the sounds ascribed to them in the text—for example, koalas don’t bellow. Problematic rhyme and meter further detract from this already disappointing reading experience. Skip this book and choose more-thoughtful, well-thought-out depictions of bedtime, nighttime, and the moon.
A disappointing addition to an already-full shelf . (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-76012-546-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Hare/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
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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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