A lion-taming tale with rhythm and heart.
Near an African village, a lion lurks in the grasslands, frightening people and animals alike, until a little drummer girl changes the big cat’s tune.
Nani loves to drum; the music she makes echoes the sounds of nature and inspires her neighbors to dance. Cunha’s digital inks balance warm and cool tones, vibrantly contrasting human characters’ brown skin, brightly patterned dresses, and textured foliage with pink and yellow clouds and the dark blues of the forest. Each page turn leads to yet another artful spread. Animals frolic to Nani’s drumming, but farmers tending their crops are terrified of the predator who looms and shush her. As Nani ventures further out to find a space safe for her boisterous art, the world around her shifts and grows; she encounters polka-dotted giraffes and “aardwolves.” But when the lion makes himself known with thunderous roars and crushed flowers beneath his paws, the subtext of this colorful allegory about confronting bullies becomes most potent. Nani, of course, stands up to the lion, playing her drum so beautifully that he has no choice but to dance. Exhausted at last, he falls to the ground. The scene of the villagers rejoicing, their arms splayed wide above their heads, with a botanical foreground and a pink mountainous sky behind them, is exuberantly charming. The image of Nani and a slumbering lion that follows offers a serene but cohesive contrast to conclude the story.
A lion-taming tale with rhythm and heart. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781665914222
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
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
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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