An eclectic, original book in which creativity is key.
Originally published in Germany, this compendium of silent sequences begs young readers to provide those sorely missing sound effects.
There’s no denying the first sentence of this title: “THIS BOOK IS MEANT TO BE READ ALOUD!” Fear not. Further instructions inform readers precisely what they should do: Read each sound that they see. The catch? The book’s creator has left every image wordless; it’s up to readers to think up the sound effects. Some sequences prove to be difficult to encapsulate in sound (what does licking a lemon sound like?). Others are quite obvious, and the tale’s delight lies in the pairings of visuals on each two-page spread. The buzz of race cars around a track mimics the buzz of flies around a small pile of poop. And yes, a bit of bawdiness comes into play, as when the fizzled explosion of a cannon is accompanied by an image of a surprised-looking adult unexpectedly farting. The brightly colored art makes bold interpretations of simple scenes, but it’s this very cartoonishness that offers young readers clarity on what’s being portrayed. The sequences are also quite intentional, deftly leading from one sound to the next, as with one passage that begins with someone screaming and ends with another character lightheartedly jeering at readers. Figures encompass a range of skin tones.
An eclectic, original book in which creativity is key. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780735846036
Page Count: 168
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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