A gentle, charming, and encouraging tale about bravely growing up.
A palm tree learns that letting go of things he no longer needs can be helpful to others in this illustrated children’s book.
Baby Palm, Daddy Palm, and Grandma Palm live together on a beautiful island in the Caribbean. Every full moon, humans arrive to collect old fronds that the trees have dropped, but Baby Palm doesn’t want to abandon his. “When I let my old ones go, I make room for new fronds to grow,” observes Daddy Palm, but Baby Palm clings tightly to what he knows. As the humans come month after month, Baby Palm notices one woman’s shape changing; she’s going to have a baby. When there are sounds of celebration over the hill, Baby Palm wants to know what’s going on, but Daddy Palm says he’ll have to grow tall enough to find out for himself. Curiosity wins out and Baby Palm decides he’s ready: He drops his fronds and realizes it really doesn’t hurt at all. As the months pass, Baby Palm grows, and soon he sees that his old fronds have become a crib for the human baby. Told in simple, accessible language, this series opener presents a clear metaphor for children discarding things they no longer need—whether that means not being afraid to lose their teeth or deciding to give up an old toy (as suggested in the end pages). But while the parallel is distinct, Mir’s engaging story is never heavy-handed. Like Daddy Palm and Grandma Palm, the tale remains patient as Baby Palm works out his willingness to release his old fronds at his own speed. Kamieniecki’s basic dot-and-line faces for the palm trees contrast with the more complex expressions of the brown-skinned humans, but both deftly communicate the emotions of the characters. There are also hidden pictures on each page, described in the endnotes, offering young readers a reason to go back and pore over the story. The scientific explanations about the relationship between humans and palm trees should be as much fun for adults as they are for children.
A gentle, charming, and encouraging tale about bravely growing up.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953887-04-7
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Mir House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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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