Another perky pink easy reader sure to delight Pinkaholics.
Our popular, pink-loving protagonist promotes reading skills and persistently pursues reading pleasures.
Seeing Pinkalicious with her nose in a book, schoolmate Jade is incredulous: “Are you reading AGAIN?” Pinkalicious admits that reading was hard to learn, “but now it’s pinkamazingly fun!” On the bus, in bed, eating, or walking, she reads. At home there is nary a screen in sight, and she looks up from her book at dinner only when Dad fears he has forgotten her face. But Pinkalicious falls into a bibliophile’s nightmare: She “has read every book at least twice!” Desperate, she tries reading catalogs, cereal boxes, and recipes: arid narrative deserts. Brother Peter casually comments, “Too bad you can’t trade yours for new ones.” Bingo: Pinkalicious promptly mounts her book-filled dollhouse on a pedestal outdoors and publicizes her free lending library. (Encountering no pesky zoning code or HOA obstacles.) That night, too excited to sleep, Pinkalicious finds her old books gone, replaced by new-to-her books. The whole pale-faced Pinkerton family reads through breakfast, with predictably messy consequences. Illustrations hew to the series’ formula, as does the text: problem develops; problem grows more complex; creative solution found by our hero. The advocacy of reading makes this pleasant new entry particularly palatable. Jade presents Asian; Pinkalicious’ community is diverse.
Another perky pink easy reader sure to delight Pinkaholics. (Beginning reader. 4-8)Pub Date: June 27, 2023
ISBN: 9780063257320
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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