Despite the book’s design flaws, this offering featuring an expecting family of color is a welcome new arrival.
A toddler imagines all the different creatures and things that could be growing or hiding in Mummy’s pregnancy bump.
This trousers-wearing tyke with brown skin and short curly brown hair hugs Mummy and, in the gentle if uninspiring rhyming text, asks a string of questions about her belly: “Is it a watermelon? That would be funny! / Or is it a little jumping bunny!” The tot goes on to wonder with fanciful logic if the bump could be an odd assortment of things of wildly different shapes and sizes, including an elephant, some new toys, a lion, and a mouse. In the end, the youngster realizes that it must be a baby sister and a new playmate. Here the preschooler is joined by a pink-clad toddler girl with matching coloring and straight, brown hair. The art, consisting of highly stylized cartoons adorned with swaths of colors and occasional patterned designs, appears strangely cropped, as if the original, Chilean edition were a different trim size than this 6 ½-inch-square book. Key figures often appear at the edges of the pages, and readers never see the mother in toto.
Despite the book’s design flaws, this offering featuring an expecting family of color is a welcome new arrival. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: March 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78285-976-5
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
This multiethnic title is not memorable enough to become a bedtime favorite.
This third title in the New Books for Newborns series features multiethnic dads getting their infants ready for bed.
Each double-page spread shows a different child with their male parent engaged in bedtime rituals. Four lines of rhyming text, each time starting with the same first line, point out nighttime objects. “Hush a bye, my baby. / Can you hear the owl call? / Time to close your eyes gently / as night starts to fall.” The text is for the most part simple and uses familiar vocabulary, but sometimes scansion falters. Although the hair and skin colors in this book range from pale to rich brown, most of the dad-and-child pairs seem to be racially similar, and no distinctly biracial child is depicted. Illustrations in a soothing pastel palette show a fair-skinned, red-haired dad carrying a tired, fair-skinned, brown-haired baby up the stairs; a dad with brown skin and brown hair holds a similar-looking baby wrapped in a towel; and a dad and child with dark hair and dark skin rock together in a chair, reading a book. Most of the dads are shown to be affectionate but not interactive with their infants. This series is meant for newborns, but the fine-lined, busy, and sometimes conceptually abstract illustrations may be more suitable for toddlers or even young preschoolers.
This multiethnic title is not memorable enough to become a bedtime favorite. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5344-0139-6
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Just sing the song; this sanitized variant is an additional purchase at best.
An unscary twist on the traditional Halloween song for first-time trick-or-treaters, illustrated with Magsamen’s signature simulated stitching designs.
There are no witches in the air in this book; the wind does not blow out the light. Instead the verse starts with “pumpkins giggling all day long,” which rhymes with “Let’s sing a song.” Continuing in this sweet mode, the second pumpkin says, “We shine so bright!” and the third one agrees, “Yes, we’re a beautiful sight.” On the fourth spread the rhythm breaks down. That pumpkin says, “We’re a little bit spooky and kooky too.” The final line stretches to rhyme: “We spread a lot of love, that’s what we do!” This revision misses the point of the original—to help young children feel brave as they learn about the mildly scary tradition of Halloween. Counting down, inherent in the original, is also eliminated in this version, though one could count the stars, smiling spiders, bats, and even hearts that decorate the pages. The cover, first page, and last page show five smiling pumpkins stacked willy-nilly. The three middle spreads show just one pumpkin each, with the fourth pumpkin rather arbitrarily sporting a witch’s hat.
Just sing the song; this sanitized variant is an additional purchase at best. (Board book. 1-3)Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-30578-4
Page Count: 12
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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