The pride of mastering skills through practice comes through in this affectionate holiday story.
A little girl’s dreidel must learn how to spin properly in time for Hanukkah in this children’s picture book.
Rebecca, a little girl with dark hair and pale skin, decides that with Hanukkah coming up, she’ll practice spinning her four favorite dreidels, each named after one of the Hebrew letters painted on their four sides: Harry Hey, Neil Nun, Gail Gimmel, and Sheila Shin. The first three of these special dreidels can whirl a long time, but Sheila just falls over immediately. At night, the dreidels practice spinning, encouraging Sheila when she falls. When the others go to sleep, Sheila keeps practicing. Though Sheila is nervous, all four dreidels dance beautifully when the time comes. The story itself doesn’t give background for the holiday, but a final section—“Let’s Learn About Hanukkah”—provides information about its origin and customs, including how to play with dreidels. Sachs (Dear Dragon Master, 2013, etc.) mirrors a child’s excitement about an upcoming holiday in the dreidels’ anticipation, both pleased and nervous, over their magical dance performance. Children can sometimes feel as if they’re being put on show during big family gatherings, so they also can relate to Sheila’s nerves and to the reassurance that’s found in the other dreidels’ kindness, plus the family warmth centered on a delicious holiday meal. The full-page illustrations by Krebs (Me & Him, 2014, etc.) are charmingly colorful and expressive.
The pride of mastering skills through practice comes through in this affectionate holiday story.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9796380-4-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Three Wishes Publishing Company
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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