Good tidings indeed.
The classic Christmas poem gets citified.
Everyone knows Moore’s yuletide mainstay: “ʼTwas the night before Christmas, / when all through the house,” and so on. In the typical picture-book treatment, the home at the poem’s center is a single-family dwelling, its closest neighbor too far away to hit with a snowball. In Semmer’s rendering, the words “So up to the housetop the coursers they flew” are accompanied by an image of Santa’s reindeer on the roof of an apartment building that’s part of a city block. This time around, “the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow” is paired with an illustration of, not a pristine lawn, but a snow-dusted cityscape, and the spread announcing “I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick” finds a brown-skinned guy, not a white dude, wearing the red suit. The book’s narrator is a Black child who lives in a beautifully appointed apartment with a cat and two siblings, two parents, and a grandparent. Semmer’s blocky, digitally tweaked pencil art, which suggests cut-paper tableaux, is micro-detailed and thoroughgoing—there is no unused space—and the traditional Christmas colors are represented by variants like tomato red, mint green, and mustard gold. Absolutely everything is alluring, especially the Christmas cookies, which sit on a dining table that faces not a Currier and Ives print, but a picture window overlooking a suspension bridge.
Good tidings indeed. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2025
ISBN: 9780063373594
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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