A merry outing for young wordsmiths.
A passel of wombats transform a community with their sophisticated vocabulary.
Evergreen Forest is “very nice and very ordinary”; some residents, like the little duckling draped glumly over a log on the opening page, might say it’s “rather dull.” The duckling perks up when a trio of wombats “with words on their minds” come tripping along the path. Describing themselves as “word-loving,” the wombats tell the duckling that “words are…‘ESSENTIAL!’ ‘MAGNIFICENT!’ ‘TRANSFORMATIVE!’” The duckling watches and learns as the wombats help animals who use regular words such as thirsty and tired spice up their vocabularies with alternatives: parched and exhausted. The duckling is therefore well equipped to lead her own family from hungry and super hungry to peckish and ravenous, earning herself the title of “honorary word wombat” by book’s end. Nichols contributes friendly cartoon personae for Ferry’s characters, placing them against a woodsy backdrop. The compositions are minimally detailed, with a small blue slug accompanying the duckling and offering little ones a seek-and-find game on most pages. The wombats’ “wonderful words” are set in attention-getting display type; they literally fill the air as the denizens of Evergreen Forest join the word celebration in a conga line. As plots go, it’s pretty thin, but young listeners may well come away ready to seek out some new words to love and, inspired by the closing “duck-tionary,” to fill their own lexicons.
A merry outing for young wordsmiths. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593711057
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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