WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO

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WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO

Name: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'RE NOT SURE WHAT TO DO
Author: Davina Bell
ISBN: 9781523529810

by Davina Bell ; illustrated by Hilary Jean Tapper ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 10, 2025

Simple yet effective advice that will ensure young people greet their world with hope and courage.

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Feeling a bit uncertain? Listen up!

Should I greet the passengers already on the bus? Should I walk the dog without telling an adult? The diverse tots in Tapper’s images confront a wide range of conflicts. Each page contains a single, simple sentence or fragment with wise counsel applicable to various situations (“Greet precious things gently,” “Make the leap!”), along with hazy watercolor, ink, and pencil illustrations set against stark white backgrounds. Offering the kind of encouragement children need to feel confident in their decision-making, this tale is one that many adults will want to share with young people. Every day, we encounter little moments that require snap decisions, and Bell’s spare text will empower kids to make emotionally intelligent choices, though she’s also clearly sensitive to their life experiences (or lack of). Tapper’s delicate art embraces the uneasiness that children sometimes feel when tackling the unfamiliar. While youngsters are the intended audience for this work, it may well prove popular with adults seeking gift books—who among us doesn’t need a reminder to “breathe in and out” or to “delight in the things that don’t happen every day”?

Simple yet effective advice that will ensure young people greet their world with hope and courage. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: June 10, 2025

ISBN: 9781523529810

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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LOVE FROM THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR

by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 15, 2015

Safe to creep on by.

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Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.

In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.

Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)

Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD?
edited by Eric Carle

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WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE BUG?
edited by Eric Carle

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MY FIRST I SEE YOU
by Eric Carle ; illustrated by Eric Carle

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)