Hats off!
House’s roof is blown off in a storm, but help arrives in many forms.
One day, “a big, blustery gust of wind” steals House’s “hat” (roof). A nearby oak tree stretches her limbs and leaves over House, but more wind WOOSHes away the attempted protection. Birds, squirrels, and mice try to help, but the wind whisks their replacement roof away, too. Human neighbors arrive to help, securing a tarp over House. The tarp protects the neighbors inside House during a rainstorm, after which a rainbow appears and roofers arrive to install a permanent roof, allowing House to “feel like myself” again. House’s front resembles a face, with windows on either side of a door with a small window in it; these features function as eyes and a mouth, and window treatments provide plenty of variety in expression (to great comic effect on the final page, when House eyes storm clouds and warns, “Don’t even think about it”). House’s inhabitant has brown skin and a long dark braid; neighbors and roofers appear to be a diverse bunch in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. Centering a house instead of a human as the main character provides a bit of distance and humor to a potentially scary topic, but House expresses feelings, too. The color palette reinforces this tone: House is a cheery yellow with teal trim, the oak tree’s leaves are rust-orange, and the storm clouds and gusts of wind are a steely blue-gray.
Hats off! (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9780593615775
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
This appealing work is an excellent addition to any emotional-intelligence shelf.
Author/illustrator Doerrfeld gives children a model for how to process difficult events and provide meaningful support to friends who need it.
Taylor is excited to build a block tower, but then a flock of birds swoops in and knocks it all down. Different animal friends try to help, in ways that cleverly mirror their nature: the bear shouts, the ostrich buries its head in the wreckage, and the snake hisses about revenge. But what Taylor (who is never referred to with gendered pronouns) really needs is to explore a whole range of emotional responses to loss, without being asked to perform any specific feeling. A cuddly rabbit shows up and just listens, giving Taylor—an expressive child with light skin, curly dark hair, and blue-and-white–striped one-piece pajamas—space for the whole process, going from grief to anger to resolution. The illustrations are spare yet textured, and the pace is excellent for reading aloud, with lots of opportunities for funny voices and discussion starters about supporting anyone through a hard time. Despite the obvious takeaway, this story doesn’t feel overly moralizing or didactic. Keeping the focus on the small tragedy of tumbled blocks makes it young-child–appropriate, with opportunities for deeper connections with an older audience.
This appealing work is an excellent addition to any emotional-intelligence shelf. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2935-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2017
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
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