While not as original as Mo Willems’ The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? (2012) or as much fun as Ryan Heshka’s Welcome to Monster...
Monsters are mighty, but even they can be tamed by one powerful word: please.
Wally lives in a small, perfectly ordinary town until monsters invade. They make poor neighbors. As depicted in digital, TV-cartoonish, neon-colored art, they come in many hues, shapes, and sizes; some have claws and others tentacles, and the number of eyes varies. Among them are the fairly traditional zombies, werewolves, and vampires. The thing they have in common: they wreak havoc, tearing up bushes and lampposts, shaking cars, stinking, and scaring children. Wally talks to them—unfortunately readers have no idea what he says and must conclude that he is asking them to desist. He also tries scaring them off with his little sister's screams and even attempts bribery with treats. Nothing works until Wally, in desperation, shouts, "Will you PLEASE stop breaking all our stuff?" Adults may wonder if shouting is really all that polite, but no matter how it is said, hearing the word "please" works for the monsters: "Soon all the monsters were on their best behavior." Vidal goes to town with the monsters, particularly the ones with tentacles, situating them in as wholesome a small town as can be imagined; though Wally and his sister are Caucasian, many of the town’s other residents exhibit a pleasing diversity.
While not as original as Mo Willems’ The Duckling Gets a Cookie!? (2012) or as much fun as Ryan Heshka’s Welcome to Monster Town (2010), this should win some fans. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4549-1103-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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