A lovely, reassuring tale for children set during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
A little girl and her friends—following Covid-19 safety protocols—take an exhilarating bike ride in this picture book.
On a windy autumn day, with Dad jogging behind, a girl rides her balance bike—“Feet on pavement. / Tush in seat. / Kick, balance, roll.”—meeting friends whom she hasn’t seen “in FOREVER,” she says. The reason for that is clear from the masks the girl and her friends are wearing and the safe distance they maintain from one another. These Covid-19 concerns don’t interfere with their fun, and that’s the point in this gently affirming tale. The story shows that masks, like the helmet each child wears while biking, are no big deal, just a simple, everyday thing worn for protection. Wheelock and Evans, who collaborated on their first children’s book, We Toot! (2019), impart this message in a loose, free-verse style, capturing the high spirits of kids at play. Swartz’s watercolor illustrations—softly hued and evocative of breezy outdoor fun—depict the kids, each wearing a differently patterned mask, as a diverse group with varied skin tones and hair colors. Speeding down a steep hill ends with the girl’s spill and tears, but Dad is there. Besides, it’s more important, she notes, to help a little boy find the toy bunny he lost during the ride. The story then repeats with one change: The characters no longer wear masks, an unspoken pledge that one day they will no longer be necessary.
A lovely, reassuring tale for children set during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73313-745-4
Page Count: 54
Publisher: House of Tomorrow
Review Posted Online: Oct. 22, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted...
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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