A joyful celebration of friendship, the stars, and finding one’s self in this world and beyond.
A lonely ghost and shadow look to the stars to find a true connection.
Nocturnal Shinbi, a smudgy white ghost with pink circles for cheeks, is tired of haunting houses and wants to explore the natural world. She settles by a nearby rock. After spotting a shooting star, she makes “a wish for a friend” and leaves a note on the rock, then disappears. Greem, a lonely, pink-cheeked dark shadow cast by Shinbi’s rock, emerges the next morning, wishing for “someone to talk to.” Spotting Shinbi’s message, he leaves her a note on a leaf, which she finds that night. A pen pal–like relationship emerges as they draw pictures of themselves and, in a shared creative activity, use pebbles to come up with their own constellations (identified in the text alongside actual star systems, rendered in a different font). When Greem throws a pebble into the sky and makes a wish of his own, a series of shooting stars appear, and the two finally meet, in a burst of golden-speckled sparks that merges into a collective palette of both light and dark. Min’s watercolor, colored pencil, and digital illustrations capture not only the night sky but also the exuberant emotions of the protagonists. The passage of time is conveyed through successive panels in double-page spreads that highlight the wondrous blue, pink, and purple hues of the sky.
A joyful celebration of friendship, the stars, and finding one’s self in this world and beyond. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781646143689
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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