A gentle exploration of shifting family dynamics.
A girl of South Asian descent learns to share the time she spends with a beloved relative.
Whenever Priya’s extended family comes over, her older siblings and cousins run off to play, telling her that she’s too young to join them. Priya doesn’t mind, though, because she gets to hang out with Mauntie (“My Auntie”)—the nickname she’s given her mother’s sister. Both the youngest in their generations, the two experiment with extravagant hairstyles, eat delicious treats, and tell each other riddles. Then one day Priya’s cousin Aditi comes to visit. Aditi, who’s close to Priya’s age, ends up intruding on Priya and Mauntie’s time, taking over a game of Go Fish and answering Mauntie’s riddles before Priya has a chance to think them through. When Aditi announces that she and her family are moving back to the neighborhood and will be around more, Priya panics. Can she find a way to share Mauntie? This clearly written, deeply empathetic book is a tender look at how families grow over time, with relationships evolving as people change locations. The story’s message stops just short of preachy, while Alam’s art, with its visible pencil strokes and details such as patterns on the curtains and wallpaper, sets an intimate tone. The illustrations depict characters with a variety of skin colors, testifying to the diversity of the South Asian experience.
A gentle exploration of shifting family dynamics. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781536229417
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
BOOK REVIEW
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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