Similarly talkative youngsters struggling with social interactions may want to schedule their own laryngitis days.
A boy who talks too much gets some lessons on the importance of listening from his classmates…and laryngitis.
The book sets the tone from the start, dialogue balloons with fading text filling the opening spread, Owen’s poor dog on her back with paws over her ears. But that’s just the start. Subsequent spreads demonstrate how Owen’s loquaciousness negatively affects his classmates on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday, though, brings a bout of laryngitis that stops Owen in his tracks. Writing everything down takes so much time! Retreating from the playground, where he just can’t keep up, he finds Isabella working on a bridge project he ruined on Monday. After his heartfelt written apology, she invites him to help her, and he becomes the fourth member of a successful team. The ending reflects real life in that Owen still has bouts of talkativeness, though now he does also listen for others’ input…and he schedules regular laryngitis days on his calendar. Barton’s pencil-and-digital illustrations portray a very diverse classroom headed by a black male teacher; red-headed Owen himself presents white, and Isabella has pale skin and black hair. Faces are incredibly expressive; readers will have no doubt how Owen’s classmates feel about his interruptions during storytime or his plot-spoiling at lunch. Discussion questions that will require some deep thinking round out the book.
Similarly talkative youngsters struggling with social interactions may want to schedule their own laryngitis days. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-399-55713-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Wild and wacky.
A picture book from the comedy duo known as Rhett & Link, creators of the online juggernaut Good Mythical Morning.
Lumo is obsessed with chicken fingers; Saffy, who is new to town and anxious about starting school, finds comfort in the only food she likes: buttered spaghetti. The night before the first day of school, a thunderstorm rages, and each kid makes a wish—“to have chicken fingers at school,” in Lumo’s case; Saffy wishes for “the first thing off the top of her head: buttered spaghetti.” File under “Be careful what you wish for.” Lumo’s and Saffy’s respective physical changes (chicken fingers for fingers, spaghetti for hair) make navigating school a challenge but bring them together in the cafeteria, where they enjoy some new foods—and their new friendship. The plotting could have been sharper: Why do the kids’ bodies suddenly return to normal? And couldn’t the authors have thought up a less old-hat story-ending punch line? Nevertheless, McLaughlin and Neal get by on their charm, and the plot sets up some funny visuals. Salcedo’s cartoony Photoshop art features well-chosen artifacts from a typical kid’s life and captures the mortification of not fitting in, which will be familiar even to readers who have never experienced breaded fingers or noodle hair. Lumo is brown-skinned and dark-haired; Saffy is pale-skinned with disheveled reddish-brown hair.
Wild and wacky. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780063474154
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperPop/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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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