A solid effort hampered by information overload.
Learning to read is hard work—for kids and monsters alike.
A monster with a scruffy orange body, purple ears and tail, and short rounded horns disappears after a tough reading lesson. “It’s kind of my fault,” reflects the story’s narrator, a tan-skinned child with curly brown hair. “I got carried away. I was acting like a teacher the other day.” It’s an insightful remark, but after a promising start, the book goes downhill as the youngster proceeds on a truly didactic search for the monster. “Word families look and sound the same at the end. Let’s use this knowledge to find my best friend.” Charts of word families appear with relentless frequency, competing with both the rhyming text and words that appear in the accompanying cartoon illustrations (for instance, a welcome mat or a button with the phrase “Reading for the win!”). Kids learning to sound out words will enjoy predicting the text; after the protagonist observes, “As I sit sipping from my favorite MUG, / I’m gently pulled into a giant…,” youngsters will eagerly shout out “HUG!” But on the whole, the attempt to blend a literacy tutorial with an exploration of how to be a good friend may prove overwhelming for the intended audience of pre-readers.
A solid effort hampered by information overload. (author’s notes, activities) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781684363209
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Editions
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet.
A ghost longs to be scary, but none of the creepy personas she tries on fit.
Misty, a feline ghost with big green eyes and long whiskers, wants to be the frightening presence that her haunted house calls for, but sadly, she’s “too cute to be spooky.” She dons toilet paper to resemble a mummy, attempts to fly on a broom like a witch, and howls at the moon like a werewolf. Nothing works. She heads to a Halloween party dressed reluctantly as herself. When she arrives, her friends’ joyful screams reassure her that she’s great just as she is. Sadler’s message, though a familiar one, is delivered effectively in a charming, ghostly package. Misty truly is too precious to be frightening. Laberis depicts an endearingly spooky, all-animal cast—a frog witch, for instance, and a crocodilian mummy. Misty’s sidekick, a cheery little bat who lends support throughout, might be even more adorable than she is. Though Misty’s haunted house is filled with cobwebs and surrounded by jagged, leafless trees, the charming characters keep things from ever getting too frightening. The images will encourage lingering looks. Clearly, there’s plenty that makes Misty special just as she is—a takeaway that adults sharing the book with their little ones should be sure to drive home.
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593702901
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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