by Koos Meinderts & illustrated by Annette Fienieg ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2012
A lovely parable for our times from an acclaimed Dutch husband/wife team.
A mountaintop is home to the man in the clouds, so called by the villagers in the valley below.
How he came to be there, no one knows, but every day he sits in his wooden cottage and draws inspiration from a beautiful landscape painting on his wall. Villagers escape the drudgery of their lives by climbing up to gaze upon the painting, ignoring the beauty of the scenery along the way. The old man welcomes all sorts to his modest home, but when a stranger comes to see his famous painting and puts the idea into his head that selling it could make him rich, he can no longer just enjoy it for the peace it gave him. Fearful and unhappy, his attitude toward the painting and his visitors changes, and he makes a fateful decision. Written in the style of a traditional tale, this very readable story is richly amplified by Fienieg's soft watercolors, from the invitingly skewed lines of the house to the foreboding shadows that reflect the man's darkening mood. The simplicity of the idyllic setting is echoed in the unadorned typeface. Endpapers depict a grand view of valleys between mountaintops just touched with sunlight, a hint of what awaits those who can appreciate what they already have.
A lovely parable for our times from an acclaimed Dutch husband/wife team. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-935954-13-2
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Lemniscaat USA
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
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by Koos Meinderts ; illustrated by Annette Fienieg ; adapted by MaryChris Bradley
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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...
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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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino
by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
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by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
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by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
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by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival
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