A well-intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at encouraging inclusion and understanding of neurodiversity.
Juan is really nervous. Field day is different from other days—it is too loud, and there are too many people.
What should he do when he gets the Jitters? Count? Sort? Clap them away? His teacher has a solution; instead of a strictly athletic event, it will be the “Mathletic Games,” since math is Juan’s favorite subject. Also, Juan will be the judge. His classmates organize geometric manipulatives by shape and color, and Juan gets to judge who advances to the next challenge. As the day progresses, he claps when he is unsure of himself. After the awards ceremony, everyone cheers Juan as being the real winner, and Juan joins in the clapping. While the story is commendably respectful of Juan and his challenges, Cruz’s tale of autism and inclusivity, expressed in the marketing, falls short of expectations. Whereas a good deal of effort is expended to highlight the protagonist’s coping mechanisms, there is no mention of autism itself within the story. Many people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder exhibit repetitive behaviors that overlap with OCD, and without pointing out these shared behaviors, the result is confusion rather than clarification. The complete absence of backmatter or even resource links compounds this. Yamamoto’s bright, straightforward illustrations portray racially and culturally diverse students and a teacher who presents as Asian; Juan has brown skin. (This book was reviewed digitally with 8-by-16-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
A well-intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt at encouraging inclusion and understanding of neurodiversity. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62317-494-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: North Atlantic
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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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