George loses his grandmother but gains a baby sister in this touching picture book about family connections.
“George loved Saturdays. Saturdays were for Stella,” George’s grandmother, a Black woman with a short, curly white Afro. Whether they spend the day out—at the park or the museum, or doing fun things downtown—or stay in and play and bake, days with Stella are filled with fun and love. One Saturday, however, the bespectacled brown-skinned boy is ready for his day with Stella, but he finds his parents (a Black man and a White woman) crying. They explain that he won’t be seeing Stella again. “From then on, George hated Saturdays.” His favorite things become reminders of sadness and loss. But his parents are preparing for something—his mother is pictured in a maternity dress—and one day, a new Stella appears in his life: a brown baby with a light Afro. With baby Stella in his life, Saturdays become as much fun as they once were; George shows Stella everything he learned from his grandmother. This lovely story uses repetition and charming detail to celebrate life’s cycles and family connections that never end. The text and cheerful pictures work together to capture the warmth and comfort of togetherness as well as the gloom of loss, which, the story assures readers, needn’t last forever.
A beautiful story of remembering the departed by passing on traditions. (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-62414-921-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
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Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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