A joyful, mesmerizing celebration of imagination.
A restless girl discovers that the world outside a car window is anything but boring—if you know how to look.
Mia’s reluctant to get into the car for the long drive to Nana’s, but soon she is wedged in the backseat—feet up, face set in a magnificent scowl, squeezed both physically and mentally. Bothe’s illustration is so precisely rendered that any child who has ever suffered a long car ride will feel it in their bones. When Mia’s father shares a fun game, though, everything changes: He tells her that everyone has a cheetah running alongside their car, keeping pace with them. Dad’s appears first—a sleek big cat with colorful spots trailing streaks as it races beside the vehicle. Mia’s own cheetah is revealed more slowly: first just a swirl of pink and purple streaking past. Then her hand trails out the window into what feels like spotted fur, and finally the creature erupts fully onto the page in blazing pink and gold, butterfly-winged and airborne. From there the highway fills with wonders: A crimson betta fish with streaming fins swims the open sky; a deep purple anteater lopes between lanes; a beluga whale glides serenely above the median. Bothe’s colorful illustrations, created in Adobe Photoshop, are lushly rendered and saturated with jewel-toned blues, sunlit greens, and warm amber light, shifting beautifully from the grounded realism of the opening domestic scenes to full-blown visual spectacle. The affectionate Black father-daughter relationship at the center of this story anchors the fantasy warmly.
A joyful, mesmerizing celebration of imagination. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9780063472662
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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
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