This author/illustrator team once again embarks upon a tale of an obstreperous princess. Life is boring for Princess Isabella. She’s tired of fancy dresses, having someone else blow her nose and smiling for hours on end. Enough—she chucks her crown out the window where it lands in the fishpond. When she refuses to retrieve it, her father the King punishes her by sending her to the pigsty. Surprise! Isabella is happy as, well, “a pig in mud!” She scratches the pigs’ bristly hides, feeds them and cleans out the sty. The backfire works; the King caves, fishes out her crown and consents to letting her do as she wishes. Sketchy cartoon illustrations ham up the humor, and kids will be rooting for the princess. Occasionally, bold type helps to emphasize words and bring the text to life: “crumbs, scratch, boring, yuckety yuck, pigsty,” and, of course, “stink” stand out on the page. A plucky princess in yucky muck is good and dirty fun. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-439-88554-X
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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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
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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