Kids will be eager to ride the reading wave.
Familiar friends at the beach entice burgeoning readers.
In this tale that follows the framework of the classic picture book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the letters of the alphabet have a message for one another: “A told B, and B told C… // it is a nice day to sit by the sea!” Page by page, more letters are introduced, frolicking in the sand or splashing in the water—all beneath the fronds of that famous coconut tree, of course. “M, N, and O ride the waves. // P, Q, and R sit in the shade.” A friendly red crab scuttles on each spread (sometimes hiding). Most letters arrive with an accessory; some match the letter’s phonetic sound (“G” has glasses, for instance), but others do not. Fun hats, towels, pails, and happily, a book are also included. A stretch of sand anchors the background, with large swaths of white space on top where the text appears. Each letter has an individual color; some repeat, but never on the same spread. Echoing the original once again, the entire alphabet piles onto the bending tree to watch the sunset—luckily, no one comes crashing down this time. Prefacing this sunny read is helpful information for early readers: boxes containing word families, sight words, and bonus words, along with comprehension questions at the end.
Kids will be eager to ride the reading wave. (Early reader. 4-6)Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9798347104123
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Simon Spotlight
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
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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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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