An encouraging take on moving and making new friends.
A girl who uses a wheelchair faces challenges at her new school.
Eight-year-old Obioma loves playing football—soccer, to readers in the United States. Using her arms as legs, she scores goals with a “special stick” and propels her wheelchair as fast as a cheetah; she jokes that her best friend Mmeri is a tortoise next to her. Obioma also loves the oranges that grow near her school. Alas, she’s forbidden to “set foot” on the farm—but surely rolling in with Mmeri on her lap to grab the fruit doesn’t count. After being caught orange-handed, Obioma’s sure she’s in trouble when she comes home and overhears her parents discussing something serious. But their news is even worse: Obioma and her family are moving to another city for Mummy’s job. At her new school—which has no ramp, requiring Daddy to carry her inside—kids stare at her and jeer that girls and wheelchair users can’t play football. Obioma grows sadder and sadder…until another child asks her to play. Unigwe warmly introduces readers to an energetic, appealingly mischievous girl whose disability is just one part of her. Cleverly reinforcing this multifaceted portrayal, Okoroafor’s cartoon illustrations depict Obioma’s wheelchair as a simple white outline, visible but muted amid lush yellow, green, and blue background hues. All characters are Black, with varying shades of brown skin, and the setting appears to be African, possibly Nigerian. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An encouraging take on moving and making new friends. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781913175375
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2023
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
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
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