A simple yet effective tale of fostering appreciation for the mundane and the unknown.
A polar bear cub learns a valuable life lesson.
Bianca loves her routine and her habitat: the calming colors, the sound of the ice cracking as she walks on it, and the constant cold. Noticing a bright butterfly one day, she leaps onto a nearby ice floe to take a closer look. The ice floe drifts for several days and nights, eventually stopping at the shores of a land filled with fascinating flora, depicted in vibrant hues of red, yellow, purple, and orange. Initially intrigued by her surroundings, Bianca quickly becomes scared and homesick. Using a broken-off tree branch, she floats home to her mother’s loving arms, with a renewed sense of affection for her life yet with an inquisitiveness about “the things she doesn’t know…yet.” Ruzzier’s straightforward, delicate text pairs well with the warm tones of his signature pen, ink, and watercolor illustrations. Featuring short sentences that are nevertheless imbued with emotion, this tale would make a lovely read-aloud. Young readers will relate both to Bianca’s feelings of comfort in the familiar and her curiosity about the rest of the world.
A simple yet effective tale of fostering appreciation for the mundane and the unknown. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780063295889
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
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
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