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PING

Name: PING
Author: Ani Castillo
ISBN: 978-0-316-42464-6

by Ani Castillo ; illustrated by Ani Castillo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 24, 2019

A sweetly articulated and socially valuable message for readers of many ages.

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Castillo’s debut employs a playful metaphor to explore socioemotional skills, addressing readers directly with tender, encouraging language.

Minimalist, lightly textured ink-and-watercolor illustrations depict adorably blobby humanoid figures wearing hooded bodysuits in a range of colors. The primary figure, a short blob, has round red cheeks and wears what looks like a red, hooded snowsuit. Each figure has round black eyes and a red dot of a nose on a white face while ink linework carefully denotes the figures’ expressions so that even the youngest readers may decipher them. The accompanying text uses “ping” to explain and promote each figure’s ownership of their feelings and actions, while “pong” clearly and simply demonstrates that one cannot control others—one can only control one’s response to others. “Time to listen! The pong is giving you something // Is it something to learn? / Something to think about? / … / Something to challenge you? / Something to keep?” While most spreads have plain white (usually) or black backgrounds, one spread depicting “taking a pause” after receiving a “pong” utilizes a richly illustrated page of lush green leaves to illustrate how the pause can be “as long as you need.” Overall, the book’s design and deliberate pacing support its message; however, much of the text is printed in an unnecessarily large font that competes with, rather than complementing, the illustrations. This is most problematic in several visually busy spreads that include text in multiple point sizes, “pinging” unevenly from one spot illustration to the next.

A sweetly articulated and socially valuable message for readers of many ages. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-316-42464-6

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Megan Tingley/Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
PEOPLE ARE MY FAVORITE PLACES
by Ani Castillo ; illustrated by Ani Castillo

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SPAGHETTI HEAD & CHICKEN FINGERS

by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal ; illustrated by Erica Salcedo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2026

Wild and wacky.

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A picture book from the comedy duo known as Rhett & Link, creators of the online juggernaut Good Mythical Morning.

Lumo is obsessed with chicken fingers; Saffy, who is new to town and anxious about starting school, finds comfort in the only food she likes: buttered spaghetti. The night before the first day of school, a thunderstorm rages, and each kid makes a wish—“to have chicken fingers at school,” in Lumo’s case; Saffy wishes for “the first thing off the top of her head: buttered spaghetti.” File under “Be careful what you wish for.” Lumo’s and Saffy’s respective physical changes (chicken fingers for fingers, spaghetti for hair) make navigating school a challenge but bring them together in the cafeteria, where they enjoy some new foods—and their new friendship. The plotting could have been sharper: Why do the kids’ bodies suddenly return to normal? And couldn’t the authors have thought up a less old-hat story-ending punch line? Nevertheless, McLaughlin and Neal get by on their charm, and the plot sets up some funny visuals. Salcedo’s cartoony Photoshop art features well-chosen artifacts from a typical kid’s life and captures the mortification of not fitting in, which will be familiar even to readers who have never experienced breaded fingers or noodle hair. Lumo is brown-skinned and dark-haired; Saffy is pale-skinned with disheveled reddish-brown hair.

Wild and wacky. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: June 16, 2026

ISBN: 9780063474154

Page Count: 32

Publisher: HarperPop/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)