Eliza is a conventionally pretty princess with blonde braids, but her mechanical talents and can-do spirit are a refreshing...
A lonely princess named Eliza uses her engineering talents to help Santa’s overwhelmed elves get ready for Christmas toy deliveries.
This substantial, rhyming story introduces Eliza and her protective parents, who live in a huge castle in a remote, snowy kingdom. Eliza, who appears to be 6 or 7, is “brainy and bright,” but she has no friends or social life. She spends her days creating unusual machines, such as an odd-sock sorter and a sock-folding machine. Escaping the castle, Eliza ends up at Santa’s workshop, where the elves are seriously behind in their work. Eliza invents a letter-reading machine, a “robotic gift-picking contraption,” and a present-wrapping machine and makes modifications to Santa’s sleigh. A grateful Santa invites her along on his Christmas Eve flight along with her new posse of elf friends, and Eliza’s parents accept her special talent and build the princess her own workshop. The bouncy text written in rhyming couplets is well-matched by large-format, mixed-media illustrations filled with humorous details and intriguing, complex contraptions of Eliza’s design. The royal family and Santa are white; the charming elves include both males and females as well as elves of color.
Eliza is a conventionally pretty princess with blonde braids, but her mechanical talents and can-do spirit are a refreshing breeze in Princessland. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9632-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies.
Pigeon finds something better to drive than some old bus.
This time it’s Santa delivering the fateful titular words, and with a “Ho. Ho. Whoa!” the badgering begins: “C’mon! Where’s your holiday spirit? It would be a Christmas MIRACLE! Don’t you want to be part of a Christmas miracle…?” Pigeon is determined: “I can do Santa stuff!” Like wrapping gifts (though the accompanying illustration shows a rather untidy present), delivering them (the image of Pigeon attempting to get an oversize sack down a chimney will have little ones giggling), and eating plenty of cookies. Alas, as Willems’ legion of young fans will gleefully predict, not even Pigeon’s by-now well-honed persuasive powers (“I CAN BE JOLLY!”) will budge the sleigh’s large and stinky reindeer guardian. “BAH. Also humbug.” In the typically minimalist art, the frustrated feathered one sports a floppily expressive green and red elf hat for this seasonal addition to the series—but then discards it at the end for, uh oh, a pair of bunny ears. What could Pigeon have in mind now? “Egg delivery, anyone?”
A stocking stuffer par excellence, just right for dishing up with milk and cookies. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9781454952770
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Union Square Kids
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
