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EUSTACE & CLYDE

Name: EUSTACE & CLYDE
Author: Marina Aizen
ISBN: 978-1-5107-1502-8

by Marina Aizen ; illustrated by Marina Aizen ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2017

Warm and cheerful with just a dash of house-hunting entertainment.

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Two koala bears look for a new home that’s a little less crowded and noisy, but the search isn’t so simple in Aizen’s (Mary Had a Little Lamb, 2013, etc.) newest picture book.

Eustace and Clyde are very different koalas: Eustace loves eating lots of leaves and spends most of the day “lazing on branches,” while Clyde is not so fond of leaves and “has no time for lazing on branches.” Despite—or perhaps because of—their differences, Eustace and Clyde are the very best and closest of friends. They live together and share a life, and when their treetop neighborhood proves too crowded, they go in search of “the perfect place for a koala pair.” They look at several new homes—one too cold, one too hot, some already occupied—and none fit quite right, so the pair happily settles back where they started, among friends and with each other. Despite characters and art seemingly attempting to follow in the steps of such landmark books as And Tango Makes Three, the attempt at LGBTQ representation is slightly undermined as the text explicitly and almost immediately identifies the koalas as friends. On the other hand, Aizen deploys a light but sincere narrative about a close, caring male friendship—a representation that’s also lacking and worthy of visibility—to gently poignant (if perhaps unintended) effect among playful illustrations.

Warm and cheerful with just a dash of house-hunting entertainment. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: May 2, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-5107-1502-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Sky Pony Press

Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
BROWN BEAR STARTS SCHOOL
by Sue Tarsky ; illustrated by Marina Aizen

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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...

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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)