The counting concepts and comedy make this a perfect 100th day read-aloud.
The 100th day of school gets a lighthearted treatment in this debut rhyming picture book.
It’s the 100th day of school, but the class has only counted up to 93. The teacher is worried she’ll be fired, so the students put their heads together to figure out what days they missed. After recalling a number of chaotic days—the class pet’s escape, the field trip to the circus, the first snowfall, and more—the classmates arrive at a new total, but now they’ve hit 101. After the poor teacher faints, the students use all their counting strategies to add up the right number of days. The teacher shows her appreciation, and the class assures her: “You can count on us!” There is no shortage of books celebrating the 100th day of school, but Reistad, a librarian, captures perfectly how busy school days can escape a careful count—and how teamwork helps the students celebrate both the fun they’ve had and the class they love. The rhyming text flows smoothly and seamlessly integrates math vocabulary (“digit,” “sum,” “abacus”). Veteran illustrator Barber skillfully creates amusing illustrations, as seen in his Nobody Likes a Booger (2017), and here, that humor is particularly present in the teacher’s expressions and body language. The students are a diverse group ethnically, but they are identical in their positive attitudes and willingness to help their beleaguered instructor.
The counting concepts and comedy make this a perfect 100th day read-aloud.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64343-987-7
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Beaver's Pond Press
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Go, Nathan! Stick it to the Man...er, Fairy.
A lad’s determination to keep his baby teeth sets him against not only the tooth fairy, but the whole Fay bureaucracy behind her.
Far more interested in the teeth than the money, Nathan ingeniously hides each fallen chopper—to no avail, as his assigned tooth fairy is just as determined to collect them, and she comes armed with a high-tech Super Tooth Sensomatic to do the job. Clad in formal office togs and topped with a ’do that wouldn’t dare show even a hair out of place in Parker’s comically detailed digital paintings, the tiny tooth fairy positively oozes bureaucratic severity. But Nathan outlasts her and even a squad of thuggish enforcers euphemistically dubbed “Tooth Experts” from the 15th League of Enchanted Commerce to earn both a rare certificate of exemption and a dental rebate. “ ‘Thanks!’ said Nathan. ‘I’ll keep them forever.’ / And he did.” The increasingly stern official missives from the tooth fairy are depicted in typescript on letterhead in the illustrations. While children are unlikely to have encountered communications of this ilk on their own behalfs, they will likely have seen their grown-ups tearing their hair out over similar ones—and their grown-ups will enjoy them thoroughly.
Go, Nathan! Stick it to the Man...er, Fairy. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4169-7915-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
While simplistic, it’s a serviceable starter for discussions of spectrum disorders with younger neurotypical audiences.
Isaac explains why he wears a mask and cape and sometimes has special needs.
Packaged between rainbow-striped endpapers, this purposeful monologue offers a mix of positive takes—“I’ve got special superpowers that make me slightly different from my brother and the other kids at school”—and coping strategies. Among these latter are looking at foreheads rather than directly at eyes, which makes him “feel scared,” and keeping personal comments “inside my head so that I don’t upset people.” In the big, simple illustrations, Walsh gives Isaac uniformly smiling pets and peers for company, and she shows him less than cheerful only once, when the buzzing of fluorescent lights “makes my ears really hurt.” At the end he explains that he has Asperger’s, “which is a kind of autism,” and closes by affirming that his brother understands him, “and now you do too!” That may be overstating the case, but Isaac comes off as less inscrutable than the children in Gail Watts’ Kevin Thinks (2012) or Davene Fahy and Carol Inouye’s Anthony Best (2013). That the book is aimed not at children on the spectrum but at their peers is made explicit in a jacket-flap note from the author, whose son has Asperger’s.
While simplistic, it’s a serviceable starter for discussions of spectrum disorders with younger neurotypical audiences. (URL list) (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: March 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8121-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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