Digs a little below the surface of most child-animal friendship books to explore deeper emotions.
A child wants to comfort an elephant friend but doesn’t know how.
Wandering around a woodsy setting, the brown-skinned youngster, in yellow hoodie and red pants, knows that the pachyderm is unhappy. What to do? Writing in second person, in rhyming couplets, an unseen narrator offers practical advice: “Do something silly to make him laugh? / Give him a scented bubble bath?” When these actions, pictured amusingly in soft gouache, pencil, and cut paper multimedia illustrations, don’t make things better, the text shifts in tone: “Your friend may want to take a walk. / You can be quiet together… / or he might want to talk… // and talk… // and talk.” With each page turn, colorful shapes explode from the elephant’s mouth, growing wilder and more frenzied. He takes on more human features as he expresses his anger. The elephant looks exhausted, and the narrator tells us, “He might have many troubles to tell. / Don’t interrupt. Just listen well.” The next page includes three vignettes depicting the elephant’s intense feelings, his gray body suffused in hues of blue, red, and yellow as he sobs, stomps his feet, and throws himself to the ground, yelling—a scene that stands out for its visual impact. Supporting social-emotional learning, this candidly reassuring book can be effectively used with young children in classrooms, libraries, and at home to encourage discussions about friendship, sadness, and sensitivity.
Digs a little below the surface of most child-animal friendship books to explore deeper emotions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781665910248
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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