An engaging tale for bug lovers—and shy readers looking for pals.
Two bashful students find friendship in this picture book about making connections.
Briella notices her classmate Jasper even though he is quiet. The other kids pick on him, but Briella understands: She’s shy, too. She decides she wants to be his friend, so on a day when she feels brave, she asks about the bugs he is looking at. At first, Jasper doesn’t talk, not even when Briella offers gummies. So she tries to learn more about bugs, thinking they’ll be able to chat. Finally, she catches a ladybug and gives it to him—but it dies in the box. Her attempt is just what Jasper needs to make an effort of his own. He gives her gummy worms and asks: “Will you be my friend?” While the story feels simple, the hurdles that the children both overcome are their shyness and the fear of not being recognized. Briella’s perseverance and her willingness to step out of her comfort zone to make a friend offer young readers valid techniques for trying to forge their own connections. Roberts uses simple phrases and short sentences to tell the enjoyable story. Taylor’s cartoon illustrations of the two white friends, with soft, watercolor-like backgrounds, have plenty of vibrant hues (and bugs) to please young readers. Briella’s facial expressions when dealing with bugs she detests are particularly charming and will likely elicit giggles.
An engaging tale for bug lovers—and shy readers looking for pals.Pub Date: April 17, 2023
ISBN: 9781959548096
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Solander Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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