An intriguing meditation on children’s agency and imagination skillfully paired with early literacy.
As summer approaches, a preschooler presents alphabetical items to her class for show and tell in this debut picture book.
Maya, a brown-skinned preschooler, gets a daunting assignment. In the 26 days leading up to preschool graduation, she must bring a show-and-tell item related to successive letters of the alphabet. Maya is thrilled—but when it’s time for the letter A, a disembodied parental voice reminds her that neither full-size airplanes nor real alligators are practical subjects. Maya settles for an apple. The next day, she is stopped from carrying her baby brother and then a beehive to school. As the letters proceed, Maya must forgo clowns and other entertaining ideas in favor of small—and boring—replacements. Some adult suggestions are reasonable (do not bring a giraffe to class); others may prompt readers to question the rigidity of parental authority (Why can’t a girl dress as a ghost for G?). In between letters, double-page spreads deftly depict Maya’s weekends, which include tricycle racing and bug watching. While Jatkar’s narrative is a bit thin, there is an inspiring trend of Maya and her parent finding more compromises as they near the end of the alphabet—and of the heroine’s vibrant, wide-ranging interests making their way into the classroom. The author’s ink, paper collage, and watercolor illustrations are detailed enough to discuss during storytime—though the small font size used for the dialogue may hinder readers practicing letter recognition.
An intriguing meditation on children’s agency and imagination skillfully paired with early literacy.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9977181-6-4
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Monkeymantra
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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