Ollie and Moon, two energetic, wide-eyed Parisian cats, are the best of friends. Moon, always dressed in red, loves surprises, and luckily Ollie, completing the French tricolor with a blue-and-white striped French sailor shirt and beret, loves to surprise her. But as much as Moon loves receiving surprises, she loves trying to guess what they are even more. When Ollie announces that he has a new surprise for Moon, he leads the way through the streets of Paris, with occasional stops along the way offering clues. À la Mo Willems’ Knuffle Bunny books, color photographs of the Arc de Triomphe, the Metro, a fruit stand and other traditional Paris sights act as background to cartoon drawings in this spirited picture-book debut. Trying to quell his growling stomach, Ollie stops first at a fromagerie to buy some Brie. “My surprise is…ROUND,” deduces Moon. “Yes, but that’s not all it is,” Ollie answers as they continue their trek. Just when Moon seems weary, Ollie knows how to cheer her up with a quick break to take funny snapshots in front of Parisian icons. Then it’s back to guessing Ollie’s best surprise yet, which is sure to wow young children as much as it does Moon. Bien fait. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-86698-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
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
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
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