A solid and accessible children’s introduction to SAD undermined by some uninspired illustrations.
A child describes being affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder in this illustrated introduction to the subject for young readers.
Granger’s book introduces brown-haired, pale-skinned Sam, who needs the sun to form happy feelings. Where Sam lives, shorter days in the winter mean longer hours of darkness. Sam feels like his battery is drained; the youngster just doesn’t want to do anything; he has no energy during those months. “It is hard to get up without the sun waking me,” Sam explains. “It is like being there but not being there.” The author ably captures what seasonal depression feels like through these kid-friendly terms, keeping the sentences short to make comprehension smoother for emergent readers. (This stays true even when Sam introduces science terms like serotonin, dopamine, and melatonin.) In addition to outlining the chemical reasons for Seasonal Affective Disorder, Sam explains why the Earth has seasons and notes that children who live in the other hemisphere get SAD during Sam’s own happiest months. The child also describes coping strategies, including gratitude journaling, talking about positive things, and finding purpose in helping others. While Granger breaks everything down very approachably, the density of text on most pages may stymie the elementary school readers to whom the book seems addressed. The flat, digital cartoon illustrations, which feature an ethnically diverse cast, are hit-and-miss; the depiction of the more depressed Sam in a grayish hue is quite effective, but other elements initially seem not to go with the text at all, such as an image of two previously unintroduced older children eating junk food (a closer read links the image to a discussion of SAD’s effects on eating habits). However, the words come through well, and children who experience SAD will find comfort knowing they are not alone.
A solid and accessible children’s introduction to SAD undermined by some uninspired illustrations.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9798886858884
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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