Would that every student could find a way to combine what they love with their schoolwork.
A vampire who loves to skateboard has to up his game to convince his classmates and teacher that skateboarding can be spooky.
Vlad attends Miss Fussbucket’s School for Aspiring Spooks, which has a very diverse student body that includes a cyclops, a demon, a siren, and an anthropomorphic black cat in addition to other young ghouls and vampire Vlad. None of them share Vlad’s enthusiasm for skateboarding (they call him “Bad Vlad” the show-off), and Vlad just keeps racking up warnings from Miss Fussbucket about skateboarding at school until he earns a detention. As he writes lines on the chalkboard, he wonders why he can’t combine the two things he’s good at to please Miss Fussbucket. Well, the opportunity to do just that comes during the field trip to the natural history museum. Vlad sees the curving backbone of the giant dinosaur skeleton and just can’t resist—and the trick, combined with his screeching and hissing, sends the human museumgoers running away in fright, his classmates and teacher applauding him for being “radically terrifying.” Moldy green with highlights of red and the hot pink of Vlad’s skateboard pop against the more sedate backgrounds of the extremely staid school and pages of negative space. Readers will enjoy the prim-and-proper uniform-clad child monsters.
Would that every student could find a way to combine what they love with their schoolwork. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-553-51345-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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