A thank-you note from grandchildren to grandmothers.
Celebrating the mutual-admiration society of grandmothers and grandchildren.
This upbeat text has the tone of an expanded greeting card. It begins with a child writing a note to Grandma (“Do you know you’re the best?”) and then continues to show how grandmothers offer unconditional love and acceptance in myriad magical and practical ways. The text’s sentiments are clear even when the sentence structure is not: “You’re grab pots and pans, / let’s make a band, / cheer up and bake / a rainy Saturday cake….” In this illustration, a grandma frosts a cake while singing into a wooden-spoon microphone; one grandchild pretends to strum a broom while two younger kids bang pots and pans. The whole family has brown skin and puffy black hair. It’s not all boisterousness. “Take a walk so we can talk, / hold my hand and understand / that sometimes things don’t go as planned.” Here, a young child with black braids walks with a grandma (rather improbably) wearing both a hijab and a bindi; both have brown skin. Bright cartoon illustrations of racially diverse generations show grandmothers and grandchildren actively swinging through a jungle and challenging a dragon as well as quietly engaging in pep talks and enjoying a seaside visit complete with sand castle building. Blank pages invite readers to add their own thoughts and pictures about grandma.
A thank-you note from grandchildren to grandmothers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-2261-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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