A heartwarming tale of intergenerational bonding.
A child of Vietnamese descent helps his grandmother get acclimated to their home in the United States.
Felix meets his grandma for the first time when she arrives from Vietnam to live with his family. The two quickly bond over pizza, music, and gardening. One day, Grandma gets lost at a city festival and, because she doesn’t speak English, can’t ask for help. Felix finds her and, later, decides to teach her English. He makes flashcards for different words, helping his grandma learn new words until “words became phrases. And phrases became sentences.” With a stronger command of English, Grandma begins to make new friends and navigates their world with greater ease. There is a beautiful sense of symmetry in Felix and his grandma’s relationship as they connect over their interests and lovingly support each other through challenges. Ho’s digital illustrations are simply stunning. Vivid colors and sunlight permeate each scene, creating a sense of warmth and joy that thrums through the book even during difficult moments. Eye-catching visual details, from the various people in the crowd scenes to the flashcards in the endpapers, add depth and personality to the world they live in. The tale wraps up with a recipe for Vietnamese pizza, just like the one that Grandma makes.
A heartwarming tale of intergenerational bonding. (Vietnamese-English glossary) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9780063224544
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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: today
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
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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