Double the fun for storytime or math lessons.
A light, rhyming story imagines if Cinderella had a lesser-known twin sister.
Schwartz, author of Ninja Red Riding Hood (illustrated by Dan Santat, 2014) and Goldi Rocks and the Three Bears (illustrated by Nate Wragg, 2014), knows how to spin a fractured fairy tale. Touting itself as a “fractioned fairy tale,” however, this take on “Cinderella” proclaims that readers familiar only with the original story “don’t know the half of it!” Breezy, pun-filled rhymes introduce Cinderella’s twin, Tinderella, who uses math to divide their wicked stepmother’s chore list in half. The fraction theme continues as the girls divide and conquer tending to the mean stepsisters, splitting meager meals, and sharing a bed. And when Prince Charming announces a ball to find himself a bride and their fairy godmother comes to their rescue, the twins know how to divide the trinkets and coach in half. Vibrant, digitally enhanced illustrations rendered in ink, gouache, and watercolor capture all the merriment until, just as in the original tale, one smitten prince is left with one shoe. Since a prince can’t be divided, Tinderella, ever the mathematician, asks the fairy godmother to double him. A fitting ending explains how Cinderella and her prince became famous and wound up on the throne while Tinderella and her prince won the kingdom’s math awards and kept fractions flourishing with baby quadruplets. With the possible exception of some dark faces in crowd scenes, the cast is an all-white one.
Double the fun for storytime or math lessons. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-17633-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2017
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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