A sweet attempt to explore boundaries that doesn’t come together.
A penguin’s preference for personal space makes community life tricky.
Heloise likes a lot of things: eating fish Popsicles, sledding, and exchanging rocks with friends. She’s not a fan of leopard seals or crowds. But penguins need huddles (tight groupings of many birds) to keep warm and to protect themselves from predators. Heloise always makes up an excuse to avoid huddles; she doesn’t want to tell her friends the truth. Eventually her friends stop asking her to join them, but she worries that she doesn’t fit in. She leaves the Antarctic and tries unsuccessfully to find a new home. When she returns, her friends have a marvelous surprise for her at the next huddle. The book offers a sympathetic portrayal of a character who’s eager to maintain personal boundaries yet still wants to embrace her friends in her own way. Kerbel draws parallels between Heloise and many introverted humans, though the analogy feels a bit strained: People have the option of staying home when they feel overwhelmed, while refusing to huddle could spell death for a penguin. At times, the pacing is awkward or abrupt, such as the transition from Heloise’s search for a place to belong to her return home. Lugo’s gouache and colored-pencil illustrations are handsomely rendered and darling, particularly all the penguins with their cold-weather accessories and eyewear.
A sweet attempt to explore boundaries that doesn’t come together. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781459839106
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.
After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9780063436121
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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