Proud preschoolers can put their new skills to the test with Cauley’s (Clap Your Hands, 1992, etc.) sly compendium of riddles that are guaranteed to stretch burgeoning imaginations. From bugs to numbers and shapes to colors, Cauley has it covered. Simple rhymes instruct children to seek out items concealed within ingenious illustrations. A blend of easier and more challenging tasks, these riddles offer a little something for everyone. New learners can simply locate basic shapes such as a circle and a square or identify familiar fruit while more advanced readers are asked to ponder which other words or pictures rhyme with a specific word. Cauley’s riddles encompass a broad range of preschool skills, including counting, mixing colors, and identifying animals and their sounds. Like a perennially perky playmate, Cauley’s rhymes encourage and cajole readers to explore their abilities. “Pairs are things / that come in twos. / Find all the pairs / besides my shoes!” The ink-and-colored pencil illustrations burst off the snow-white backgrounds; the vividly colored, playful characters instantly attract the reader’s attention. The quixotic cast of characters, which include a nattily dressed black bear and a dapper monkey sporting a flower-bedecked hat, will evoke plenty of smiles from readers. Intriguing, challenging, and most of all fun: this is one readers won’t be in a hurry to put down. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23573-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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