This funny story offers a fresh approach to accepting each individual’s unique personality.
In this French import, a little boy narrates a story about his dog, Alfred, who has a great personality but a significant odor issue.
Faithful companion Alfred is always there to cheer up his owner. The huge dog has short, brown fur, an oval body, and an unusual, white nose reminiscent of a cheese grater. Alfred hasn’t had a bath in some time, if ever, and he smells so bad that he attracts flies. The little boy effects change by scrubbing Alfred clean, but then the dog evinces a personality change, tiptoeing around in a raincoat and boots so he doesn’t get dirty again. The boy gets down in the mud with Alfred to reinstate the dog’s distinctive stench, and order is restored as boy and dog float off on a cloud of odiferous fumes, heading for a new home together. Delightfully imaginative illustrations in a loose, cartoon style use white backgrounds and vibrant swirls of color to indicate Alfred’s odors. One hilarious double-page spread shows Alfred in profile as a sort of scent map, with each stinky area identified and each smell indicated by a symbolic key. The unnamed narrator has brown hair, pink cheeks, and white skin. (His face is a line drawing using the white space of the backgrounds.)
This funny story offers a fresh approach to accepting each individual’s unique personality. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2823-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
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
A disappointing follow-up.
Inventor Izzy Gizmo is back in this sequel to her eponymous debut (2017).
While busily inventing one day, Izzy receives an invitation from the Genius Guild to their annual convention. Though Izzy’s “inventions…don’t always work,” Grandpa (apparently her sole caregiver) encourages her to go. The next day they undertake a long journey “over fields, hills, and waves” and “mile after mile” to isolated Technoff Isle. There, Izzy finds she must compete against four other kids to create the most impressive machine. The colorful, detail-rich illustrations chronicle how poor Izzy is thwarted at every turn by Abi von Lavish, a Veruca Salt–esque character who takes all the supplies for herself. But when Abi abandons her project, Izzy salvages the pieces and decides to take Grandpa’s advice to create a machine that “can really be put to good use.” A frustrated Izzy’s impatience with a friend almost foils her chance at the prize, but all’s well that ends well. There’s much to like: Brown-skinned inventor girl Izzy is an appealing character, it’s great to see a nurturing brown-skinned male caregiver, the idea of an “Invention Convention” is fun, and a sustainable-energy invention is laudable. However, these elements don’t make up for rhymes that often feel forced and a lackluster story.
A disappointing follow-up. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68263-164-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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