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KEEP YOUR HEAD UP

An excellent book for teaching children the importance of showing themselves grace and kindness.

D wakes up late, no one greets him, and his sister has used his favorite toothpaste to make slime. Will D’s day get any better?

D, a young Black boy, tries to make the best of a bad day. Despite the less-than-stellar start to his morning, he manages to keep his head up and try to turn it around. However, once at school, he learns that he’s missing his gym uniform and won’t be able to participate. As hard as he tries to fight it, his “bad day face slips out.” As the day progresses, D’s “bad day face” becomes his “scrunchy face,” and eventually he has a full-on “meltdown”—which lands him in the principal’s office. There, D talks with Miss King, who likens him to a fragile vinyl LP, an analogy that is both fitting and affirming. D’s parents come to pick him up from school, which doesn’t help his mood, but he makes the decision to keep his head up anyway. D’s mental state is represented in Palmer’s painterly illustrations by a cloud that floats above his head. As the day wears on, the cloud grows bigger and darker, the meltdown page rendered as nothing but vigorous black brush strokes. Readers will recognize their own feelings of anger, disappointment, and loss of control through Neil’s empathetic text, laden with sensory metaphors. D’s school is majority Black, and his teachers and Miss King are Black as well. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An excellent book for teaching children the importance of showing themselves grace and kindness. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-5344-8040-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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

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THE BIG CHEESE

From the Food Group series

From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.

A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.

From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.

From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023

ISBN: 9780063329508

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023

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