A fun story for all the kids who think their teachers live at school, because where else would they live?
Well-meaning nature buff Miranda has a bad case of overgeneralizing.
Miranda Montgomery adores the Nature Joe Animal Show, admiring the way the brown-skinned wildlife expert rescues wild animals who are lost or in distress and returns them to their natural habitats. With her Nature Joe polo shirt and green shorts on and her brown billowing hair, Miranda enters the grocery store to find her teacher, Mrs. Birdley, far from her natural habitat: school. She makes several failed attempts to capture the wily Mrs. Birdley—who is oblivious—but an oversized trash can finally brings her the success she has witnessed Nature Joe accomplish with lions, lemurs, weasels, and more. With Mrs. Birdley locked safely away in her classroom for the weekend, Miranda walks home confident…until the next day, when she spots yet another adult from school browsing wares in the home-improvement store. From this book’s bright green cover to its lively endpapers, readers feel Miranda’s assurance that her task is just as important (and as right) as Nature Joe’s. Despite Miranda’s suburban locale, every few pages her imagination overtakes the scene and overlays it with an all-green habitat where she becomes the rescuer. Her facial expressions aptly convey surprise and disappointment when her traps don’t work as well as Nature Joe’s, but when she succeeds, her confidence is palpable. Both Miranda and Mrs. Birdley have light-brown skin.
A fun story for all the kids who think their teachers live at school, because where else would they live? (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: June 30, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-2704-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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