If a school pep rally could walk and talk, this kid would be it.
A great prescription for kids who tremble at the thought of their first day of school.
A young African American girl with deep brown skin, round cheeks, and an infectious smile spends her first day of school celebrating spirit in many ways. With her hair in two gigantic puffballs, she shows her school spirit with snazzy shoes (“STOMP, STOMP!”), her backpack (“ZIP, ZIP!”), and her “loud…clear” singing in class (“ABC, 123!”). Her spirit surfaces in onomatopoeic words on nearly every double-page spread, contributing to the high energy of the story. Morrison’s vibrant oil paintings, reminiscent of those by artist and NFL player Ernie Barnes, feature close-up perspectives of the little girl and everyone she encounters while they reveal lots of diversity both in her neighborhood and at school. She even has a black male teacher—a rare demographic in American elementary schools—who captivates his class during storytime. Like its predecessors, I Got the Rhythm(2014) and I Got the Christmas Spirit (2018), this picture book establishes a sentence pattern that persists, one that will help nascent readers predict what comes next. Each line begins with a personal pronoun and an active-voice verb—“I share,” “I breathe,” “we sing,” etc.—that exudes this protagonist’s enthusiasm for school.
If a school pep rally could walk and talk, this kid would be it. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0261-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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