An entertaining look at starting a new school and some foundational parts of speech.
Pattison’s picture-book story about the first day of school is told almost entirely via nouns and adjectives.
The story, like the title, begins with a frown as a child, Jo (who has pale skin and brown hair), gets off the bus on a very rainy day. Down a long, long hall and through a tall, tall door is Jo’s brand-new classroom. The one friendly child there, Bo (who has tan skin and brown hair),shows Jo the ropes, helping through classes and lunch. When they make it to recess, Jo begins to smile; when two sneaky verbs intrude into the narrative and are sent home by a referee (“Verbs! No Verbs! Red card!”), Jo and Bo both laugh. Jo helps Bo with some spelling, and soon the day is over. Jo nervously waits for a parent to show up until Mom finally appears. Pattison’s text is optimized to get the most meaning across with the fewest words. This approach means the story relies heavily on Joven’s illustrations to move the action forward (especially since verbs are not allowed). The accessible vocabulary and the digital cartoon images match perfectly in tone, and Jo’s anxiety about being new is very relatable. The design elements for the text are also helpful for emergent readers: Nouns are primarily written in blue, adjectives in black, and the verbs are in hot pink.
An entertaining look at starting a new school and some foundational parts of speech.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2026
ISBN: 9781629443409
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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