Posey is nervous about first grade. She’ll have to walk all the way down to the hall to Miss Lee’s class. Alone. It’s a long way from the Kiss-and-Go-Lane to the first-grade classroom, and the corridor seems especially long when the neighbor boys add to her anxiety by telling her tales about the snakes and blood-sucking monsters that lurk there. On top of everything else, Posey’s mom will not let her wear her favorite tutu costume to school. She loves being Princess Posey, the Pink Princess, but she has to wear school clothes to school, doesn’t she? Posey’s family supports the little girl and helps her make her transition to the big world of first grade. Emergent readers can be anxious as they make the transition from easy readers to early chapter books and, like Posey, can be overwhelmed by new challenges. Short sentences, a generous font, ample white space and Sisson’s charming, expressive black-and-white illustrations make this sweet story just right for them. First graders will be looking for more stories about Posey. (Fiction. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-399-25167-2
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
One of the watershed moments in African-American history—the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis—is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything [he] want[s].” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58430-161-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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