A visual feast.
A celebration of humankind’s connection to the natural world, as a child joyfully observes how a tree—and all the elements that allow it to flourish—lives on in people.
A brown-skinned child with short, curly black hair plucks an apple from a tree. As it’s eaten, the fruit’s rosy glow is reflected in the youth’s cheeks as the text reads, “The tree in me / is part apple.” And so the poetic text, with the tree refrain starting each stanza, continues. The wise child, with the help of a multiracial cast of friends, plays among glorious trees—climbing, swinging from, and reading on branches; jumping among leaves; and resting in their cool shade. With each spread, the link between the trees and the children strengthens. The soil, sun, and rain that nourish the trees are also parts of the child, as are the bee that pollinates, the squirrel that regenerates, and the worm that decomposes and enriches the ground. The cycles of the tree and of the larger natural world, including humans, are honored. Luyken captures the splendor of nature in her brushwork and patterns. Done in gouache, pencil, and ink, her simplified designs are layered with energy and skillfully composed. Warm pink and yellow hues create a soft radiance, cooled by the middle spreads of predominant blue patterns for rain and sky, which create endless delight for the children. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-14-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
A visual feast. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-11259-5
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
Wild and wacky.
A picture book from the comedy duo known as Rhett & Link, creators of the online juggernaut Good Mythical Morning.
Lumo is obsessed with chicken fingers; Saffy, who is new to town and anxious about starting school, finds comfort in the only food she likes: buttered spaghetti. The night before the first day of school, a thunderstorm rages, and each kid makes a wish—“to have chicken fingers at school,” in Lumo’s case; Saffy wishes for “the first thing off the top of her head: buttered spaghetti.” File under “Be careful what you wish for.” Lumo’s and Saffy’s respective physical changes (chicken fingers for fingers, spaghetti for hair) make navigating school a challenge but bring them together in the cafeteria, where they enjoy some new foods—and their new friendship. The plotting could have been sharper: Why do the kids’ bodies suddenly return to normal? And couldn’t the authors have thought up a less old-hat story-ending punch line? Nevertheless, McLaughlin and Neal get by on their charm, and the plot sets up some funny visuals. Salcedo’s cartoony Photoshop art features well-chosen artifacts from a typical kid’s life and captures the mortification of not fitting in, which will be familiar even to readers who have never experienced breaded fingers or noodle hair. Lumo is brown-skinned and dark-haired; Saffy is pale-skinned with disheveled reddish-brown hair.
Wild and wacky. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 16, 2026
ISBN: 9780063474154
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperPop/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
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
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