Don’t scratch your head over this purchase: Entertainment and information are all wrapped up in one funny and disinfected...
Head lice morph into friendly fellows in this comical and necessary title.
When the intrepid narrator’s mother discovers his infestation, she immediately jumps into action. Factoids about lice and their transmittal and treatment follow quickly. The youngster suffers from a large dose of shame as he wonders how they found him. He willingly cooperates with his ever-vigilant mother as she marches boldly into the fray, which climaxes with a visit to “a professional lice treatment place.” Alas, the lice return, and the treatment must be repeated. Never fear, the boy knows his medieval history and readies for the next joust with suitable head armor. Shannon’s trademark color palette of yellows and oranges, so wonderful in his David books, fills the spreads with explosive energy as his magnificently magnified lice leap off the pages with endearingly expressive faces, personalities and costumes. Playful lettering becomes part of the page design and demands a most expressive reading voice. Few books for young readers come with a warning. Heed the one boldly penned on the back cover: “This book will make you ITCHY!”
Don’t scratch your head over this purchase: Entertainment and information are all wrapped up in one funny and disinfected package. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-545-14313-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
PROFILES
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
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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