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SCAMP

Name: SCAMP
Author: Anden Wilder
ISBN: 9780316558266

by Anden Wilder ; illustrated by Anden Wilder ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 4, 2025

Perfectly adorable, especially for families with babies and felines of their own.

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“Scamp’s house has two cats: one black and one pink.”

But one of the felines is changing into a different sort of creature. As the book opens, a black cat and a human baby clad in pink striped pajamas sit side by side. “Hector and Scamp. Scamp and Hector.” The two are clearly best friends and do all the same things together: groom themselves, roam on all fours, sharpen their claws (Scamp paws gently at the couch, while Hector scratches away at it), and attack the vacuum. One day, with a look of utter surprise while holding on to her crib rail, Scamp realizes that she can stand up (“Scamp was pretty sure cats didn’t stand on two feet”). Later, it happens again as she props herself up with the table. Then at dinner she tries using a spoon, and at bathtime, Scamp finds herself enjoying the water. “Her whiskers drooped. She was a bad cat.” When Hector gets left outside in the rain, however, Scamp’s human abilities come in handy. Watercolor, colored pencil, and gouache artwork and clever endpapers put the spotlight on Scamp and Hector’s friendship, highlighting how similar the two are in shape and size. The spare text plays against the illustrations with gentle humor, demonstrating that while change can be unnerving, true friendship will find a way to endure. Scamp is light-skinned with tiny dark pigtails.

Perfectly adorable, especially for families with babies and felines of their own. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025

ISBN: 9780316558266

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)