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BOOKIE & COOKIE TURN THE PAGE

Name: BOOKIE & COOKIE TURN THE PAGE
Author: Blanca Gómez
ISBN: 9780593696835

by Blanca Gómez ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2026

Another creative tale of friendship and perspective.

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Bookie and Cookie return for more metafictive fun.

Brown-skinned Bookie, the optimist, and pale-skinned Cookie, the cynic, stand on a blank page. In the tradition of fourth wall–breaking stories, the best friends wonder what awaits them next. Ever-hopeful Bookie imagines “a bright sunny day,” and Gómez supplies an illustration of a crayon-doodled meadow where the two chase butterflies with nets. Cookie, unconvinced, counters with the possibility of “an awful stormy day.” Cookie’s imaginings are drawn in the same bold style as the book’s main scenes, contrasting with Bookie’s sketched fantasies. The pattern continues as Bookie dreams up cheerful adventures while Cookie predicts less pleasant outcomes: traffic jams, mosquitoes, and even a naughty kid who won’t share. That child appears brown-skinned in Cookie’s daydreams but with pale skin in Bookie’s, where she’s good-natured and pleasant (indeed, all characters in Bookie’s scenes, including the titular duo, have paper-white skin), potentially reinforcing erroneous assumptions about darker-skinned children being more likely to cause trouble. Still, the story offers a lighthearted reminder about optimism, since, as Bookie points out, things might turn out just fine after all. The contrast between Bookie’s and Cookie’s imaginings and their witty back-and-forth results in a playfully self-aware story.

Another creative tale of friendship and perspective. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 10, 2026

ISBN: 9780593696835

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Rocky Pond Books/Penguin

Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
A PATHWAY FOR POLLINATORS
by Michelle Schaub ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez

- BOOK REVIEW
BOOKIE AND COOKIE
by Blanca Gómez ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez

- BOOK REVIEW
A PLACE FOR RAIN
by Michelle Schaub ; illustrated by Blanca Gómez

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK LOST AND FOUND

From the Little Blue Truck series

by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 2026

Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.

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Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.

After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.

Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026

ISBN: 9780063436121

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BLUE TRUCK AND RACER RED
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BLUE TRUCK MAKES A FRIEND
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry

- BOOK REVIEW
TIME FOR SCHOOL, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)