Buckle up for this intrepid crawler’s quest—a rhyming ride with a racing twist.
An infant’s crawl across the living room turns into a fantastical, perspective-shifting racing adventure.
A red-helmeted baby races across a living room that’s been recast as an epic racetrack, with furniture and other ordinary objects becoming forests, mountains, and waterways. Encouraged by an older sibling (“Baby, start your engine…crawl!”), the determined infant navigates obstacles, makes pit stops, and presses onward to the finish line. Tobin Fine’s racing terminology (straightaway, stalls) creates an effective sports-announcer rhythm that propels the narrative forward, while the consistent rhyming text keeps the momentum going throughout. Fabiani’s child-friendly mixed-media illustrations skillfully depict the dual perspective—both the actual living room and the way the baby sees it. The compositions play with scale, transforming a parquet floor and fluffy carpeting into vast terrains from Baby’s viewpoint. In one particularly effective spread, Fabiani frames Baby’s vision through a helmet-shaped portal with dashboardlike indicators below, cleverly simulating how the world might appear through a racer’s visor, reinforcing Baby’s imaginative point of view while maintaining the book’s racing theme. Worth noting is the text’s consistent use of they/them pronouns for the baby and nongendered descriptions of family members (“Parked right on their parent’s knee, / Baby’s where they’re meant to be”). Characters are pale-skinned.
Buckle up for this intrepid crawler’s quest—a rhyming ride with a racing twist. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780593904992
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Birdsong began her career as a teacher, and the book will find repeated use in the classroom.
A multicultural girl-power manifesto featuring a feisty young girl who faces her day as a knight on an epic quest.
The unnamed narrator puts on her “armor” (a rainbow sweater) and fills her “treasure chest” (a backpack). Venturing forth to “explore new worlds,” she drives back “dragons” (neighborhood dogs on their walk), boards the “many-headed serpent” (her school bus, with schoolmates’ heads protruding from every window), and visits “the Mountain of Knowledge” (the school library) to “solve the mysteries of the unknown.” After standing up for her beliefs—by joining a classmate sitting alone in the cafeteria—the young girl returns home to rest in the lap of an older female relative, possibly a grandparent/primary caregiver, to prepare for the next day, when she can be “fierce again.” Birdsong’s repeated refrain—“I will be fierce!”—underlines the unambiguous message of this sassy picture book, and Chanani’s bold and energetic illustrations reinforce the text’s punchy, feminist-y declarations. They depict a joyously multiracial environment, consciously tackling stereotypes with an elderly, white, female bus driver and a groovy, Asian-presenting librarian with a green streak in her hair. The fierce protagonist herself has brown skin and fluffy, dark brown hair, and her caregiver also has brown skin.
Birdsong began her career as a teacher, and the book will find repeated use in the classroom. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29508-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Sure to assuage the fears of all astronauts bound for similar missions.
A genius way to ease kids into the new adventure that is kindergarten.
In an imaginative ruse that’s maintained through the whole book, a young astronaut prepares for his mission to Planet Kindergarten. On liftoff day (a space shuttle–themed calendar counts down the days; a stopwatch, the minutes), the small family boards their rocket ship (depicted in the illustrations as the family car), and “the boosters fire.” They orbit base camp while looking for a docking place. “I am assigned to my commander, capsule, and crewmates.” Though he’s afraid, he stands tall and is brave (not just once, either—the escape hatch beckons, but NASA’s saying gets him through: “FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION”). Parents will certainly chuckle along with this one, but kindergarten teachers’ stomach muscles will ache: “[G]ravity works differently here. We have to try hard to stay in our seats. And our hands go up a lot.” Prigmore’s digital illustrations are the perfect complement to the tongue-in-cheek text. Bold colors, sharp lines and a retro-space style play up the theme. The intrepid explorer’s crewmates are a motley assortment of “aliens”—among them are a kid in a hoodie with the laces pulled so tight that only a nose and mouth are visible; a plump kid with a bluish cast to his skin; and a pinkish girl with a toothpick-thin neck and huge bug eyes.
Sure to assuage the fears of all astronauts bound for similar missions. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 20, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4521-1893-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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