REENA'S RAINBOW

Name: REENA'S RAINBOW
Author: Dee White
ISBN: 978-1-925335-49-1

by Dee White ; illustrated by Tracie Grimwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2017

There is no sense of a Deaf community, and Reena’s plot-driven relationship to the hearing children raises questions about...

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A deaf white girl is sad when she perceives her difference.

“In Reena’s world, sounds scattered and scrambled and made no sense.” She finds a companion in a little brown dog that joins the kids’ playtime in the park. Dog shows the children (a racially diverse bunch) the best places to hide, but Reena always finds them. When it’s her turn to hide, nobody can find her, and she ends up alone because she can’t hear them calling her. When Reena asks her mother why she is different, she signs back: “We are like the colours of the rainbow. We are all different.” The platitude doesn’t make Reena feel better. She decides she must be periwinkle blue, which isn’t a rainbow color, and feels uncomfortably different until the day she spots a falling tree branch and screams, alerting Dog, who jumps and knocks a playmate out of the way. Now she and Dog are part of the rainbow. Reena’s emotions are gently portrayed, and the illustrations softly match the tone of the storyline, doing a particularly good job at developing the relationship between Dog and Reena. Though the rainbow device seems forced and the resolution simplified, all kids are likely to relate to the feeling of being left out.

There is no sense of a Deaf community, and Reena’s plot-driven relationship to the hearing children raises questions about the book’s audience: is it for kids like Reena or her hearing playmates? (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-925335-49-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: EK Books

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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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)

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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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RUBY FINDS A WORRY

From the Big Bright Feelings series

by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019

A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...

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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)