A well-told story featuring creative kids who excel at fashioning their own fun.
Zuri Ray loves a good party.
When our protagonist, who was introduced in Zuri Ray Tries Ballet (2021), decides to throw a summer bash, her parents suggest reusing the decorations from Zuri’s third birthday party, playing ’80s music, and making an olive Jell-O mold. Bad ideas! So, with her parents’ encouragement, Zuri springs into action to plan her own fête with help from her sister, Remi. Their friends come over and volunteer to get their families to contribute food and decorations. The kids decide on a menu of barbecue and tacos, and they plan the party around a talent show in which the kids will perform. When the day arrives, Lupe dances to Swan Lake, the Patel twins perform magic tricks, Remi and Tessa do a hip-hop number, and Zuri plays guitar and sings. A few mishaps threaten to derail the show, but Zuri and friends recover beautifully, with the help of Zuri’s caring parents, and they all prepare for a grand finale guaranteed to please everyone. Sordo’s colorful, digitally created illustrations portray a loving, diverse community of friends and family. Biracial Zuri, who has brown skin and an Afro, has a White dad and a Black mom; her friends are diverse; and no two (except the twins) have the same skin tone or hair texture. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A well-told story featuring creative kids who excel at fashioning their own fun. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-291804-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.
After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9780063436121
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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