Children can expand on the ideas in this slight celebration of weather; strong backmatter will answer their questions.
A group of racially diverse children show their appreciation for the rain in this series entry.
Each book of the I Like the Weather series starts with the title declaration and a statement as to how that weather “speaks” to an unidentified first-person child narrator: “I like the rain— / pitter-patting through the green, / washing all the petals clean, / tapping on my nose and cheeks. / This is how the rain speaks.” The text then goes on to describe the different activities to enjoy in the rain—splashing in puddles, listening to thunder, and seeing a rainbow. The cheery, soft-edged cartoon illustrations depict all this and add details, such as floating a paper boat in a puddle and taking shelter before a storm. While the rhythms are spot-on (and identical) across all four books, the rhymes are looser: sheets with streaks; cushions with oceans. A backmatter spread in each book gives child-appropriate, easy-to-understand science-based answers to four weather-related questions, including: “What are lightning and thunder”; “Why does wind blow?”; “Why does the sun feel hotter in summer?”; and “Why is snow white?” The final question is always “How does the ___ help us?” Few adults are depicted even when children are in or near bodies of water, and two children on a boat wear rain gear but no life jackets. A single scene in I Like the Wind shows a secondary character in a wheelchair; a primary character throughout wears glasses. (This book was reviewed digitally with 7.9-by-15.8-inch double-page spreads viewed at 44.2% of actual size.)
Children can expand on the ideas in this slight celebration of weather; strong backmatter will answer their questions. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 8, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64686-098-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
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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