Great amusement for the bold and timid alike.
Young readers and listeners will feel like cheering when this unprepossessing hero gets his due.
Davies’ signature caricature art lends itself perfectly to an exaggerated visual accompaniment for this earnest, simple and sweet tale of a boy, his bike and a bully. Ben’s great new bike takes him by any route he likes to school, including the long one over hill and dale, hopping across a stream on the heads of what look like sharks, leaping a line of school buses. But, alas, arrival at school only means that Adrian Underbite (“perhaps the world’s largest third-grader”) makes off with Ben’s bike. When Ben later finds Adrian in “a significant spot of trouble,” both readers and Ben may find that doing the right thing is not the first thought that comes to mind. “How extraordinarily terrible,” Ben muses sardonically. There are a few tense moments in the brief narrative when it seems that no good deed will go unpunished, but a familiar story emerges—spoiler here: A bully has a change of heart—and it becomes astonishingly fresh and fun in Davies’ hands. Davies’ cheeky, cheerfully frayed line gives readers figures somewhat larger than life—and indeed twice as natural. Ben’s hasty, heroic hoodie rescue is dramatic and funny, and the last line and accompanying illustration will provoke out-loud laughter.
Great amusement for the bold and timid alike. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 28, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59643-794-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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