An upbeat, if slightly uneven, ode to food production with bright, enthusiastic imagery.
A spirited, classroom-ready tribute to farmers and the “simple gifts” they bring.
Inspired by the 19th-century Shaker hymn “Simple Gifts,” attributed to Joseph Brackett, this reimagining adds new lyrics to celebrate gratitude and community in a lively school performance. Pattison gives the timeless work a bright, kid-friendly spin with words that honor hard work and the harvest. Students sing, act, and dance their appreciation for farmers in a cheerful ode to those who nourish the world. Lines such as “We’ll fill with gratitude for each farmer we meet” lend the story a feeling of warmth, grounding its message in heartfelt simplicity. However, although the new lyrics generally work well, the book has a few issues: Pattison’s low-key text sometimes feels mismatched with Kole’s lively, energetic full-color illustrations, and some lines read as clipped or rushed—making it occasionally awkward as a read-aloud, especially given the slow rhythm of the familiar tune. Still, the cartoon-style artwork effectively captures joyful children in colorful costumes, leaping and twirling with community pride. Overall, the book offers educators a thoughtful way to integrate music, movement, and social studies into a meaningful lesson about agriculture.
An upbeat, if slightly uneven, ode to food production with bright, enthusiastic imagery.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781629443140
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Mims House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
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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