Former Sesame Street editor-in-chief Hays offers a comprehensive resource for fledgling preschoolers and their anxious parents. Starting with the basics and progressing to behavioral expectations and socialization issues, she covers preschool from beginning to end. She even uses the end papers to maximum potential, where Kelley’s lively illustrations depict the alphabet, numbers and colors. From mastery of one’s first name to mastery of the potty, here’s a wealth of preschool readiness skills to observe, model and achieve. There’s first-day-of-school separation anxiety and the new-kid-in-school blues, along with barnyard animals, shape recognition and other favorites. Rather than tackling it in a single-sitting read-aloud session, parents should best use this in small segments. Kelley’s colorful, detailed illustrations lend plenty of opportunities for reader interaction; vibrant, full-color spreads with engaging children enjoying a variety of activities will draw readers in. Includes a parent’s education guide. (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: July 12, 2005
ISBN: 0-375-82519-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
This charming, colorful counting tale of ten little fish runs full-circle. Although the light verse opens and closes with ten fish swimming in a line, page-by-page the line grows shorter as the number of fish diminishes one-by-one. One fish dives down, one gets lost, one hides, and another takes a nap until a single fish remains. Then along comes another fish to form a couple and suddenly a new family of little fish emerges to begin all over. Slick, digitally-created images of brilliant marine flora and fauna give an illusion of underwater depth and silence enhancing the verse’s numerical and theatrical progression. The holistic story bubbles with life’s endless cycle. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63569-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts.
A playful counting book also acts as a celebration of family and human diversity.
Shannon’s text is delivered in spare, rhythmic, lilting verse that begins with one and counts up to 10 as it presents different groupings of things and people in individual families, always emphasizing the unitary nature of each combination. “One is six. One line of laundry. One butterfly’s legs. One family.” Gomez’s richly colored pictures clarify and expand on all that the text lists: For “six,” a picture showing six members of a multigenerational family of color includes a line of laundry with six items hanging from it outside of their windows, as well as the painting of a six-legged butterfly that a child in the family is creating. While text never directs the art to depict diverse individuals and family constellations, Gomez does just this in her illustrations. Interracial families are included, as are depictions of men with their arms around each other, and a Sikh man wearing a turban. This inclusive spirit supports the text’s culminating assertion that “One is one and everyone. One earth. One world. One family.”
A visually striking, engaging picture book that sends the message that everyone counts. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30003-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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