A sweet and charming tale that validates different ways of expressing love.
A young Vietnamese girl discovers the varied ways in which her friends and family express their love for one another.
Looking for a special place to keep her feelings, Thương asks her friends where they keep their love for their parents. Her friends, a diverse array of children, share the ways they convey affection. These include a vocalized declaration like “I love you” as well as nonverbal actions that demonstrate appreciation and respect. Each of these examples is symbolically linked to a body part. One friend keeps it in his head and explains that trying his best and learning new things make his parents happy. Another friend keeps it in her heart, as doing fun things with her parents makes her happy. Thương also observes members of her family listening carefully, gardening, and cooking her favorite meal. This exploration of expressing familial devotion provides opportunities for social-emotional learning by connecting actions, both physical and emotional, with love. The gentle and affirming tone doesn’t prioritize one form over another and subtly introduces the ways culture can influence our expressions and how we reciprocate affection. The friendly cartoon illustrations are done in a cheery mix of bright pastel colors, which reinforces the soothing comfort of unconditional love. Thương is Vietnamese, and her friends have a range of skin tones and hair colors. A Vietnamese rhyme reflecting the story’s theme is reproduced in the backmatter along with an English translation.
A sweet and charming tale that validates different ways of expressing love. (author's note, Vietnamese glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5132-8943-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: West Margin Press
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
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
Haphazard but jolly enough for one outing; it probably won’t last for more.
A flurry of mail addressed to Duncan’s crayons ushers in the Christmas season in this novelty spinoff of the bestselling The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) and The Day the Crayons Came Home (2015).
Actual cards and letters are tucked into envelopelike pouches pasted to the pages; these are joined in some cases by other ephemera for a package that is likely to invite sudden, intense play followed by loss and/or damage that will render the book a disappointment to reread. That’s probably OK, as in contrast to the clever story that kicked this small series off, this outing has a hastily composed feel that lacks cohesion. The first letter is addressed to Peach from Mom and includes a paper doll of the “naked” (de-wrappered) crayon along with a selection of tabbed changes of clothing that includes a top hat and tails and a bikini top and bottom. Peach’s implied gender fluidity does not mitigate the unfortunate association of peach with skin color established in the first book. The sense of narrative improvisation is cemented with an early page turn that takes the crayons from outdoors snow play to “Feeling…suddenly very Christmas-y, the crayons headed inside.” Readers can unpack a box of punch-out decorations; a recipe for gluten-free Christmas cookies that begins “go to store and buy gluten-free cookies”; a punch-out dreidel (turns out Grey is Jewish); a board game (“six-sided die” not included); and a map of Esteban (aka Pea Green) and Neon Red’s travels with Santa.
Haphazard but jolly enough for one outing; it probably won’t last for more. (Novelty. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-51574-6
Page Count: 52
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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