Positive advice for helping kids set and meet personal goals.
A duckling is afraid to try new things but learns how to make plans in this children’s picture book.
Little One, a newly hatched duck, lacks the courage to attempt things it's never done, including walking and swimming. Its mother points out advantages of learning new skills, and teaches Little One a simple method: “First say, I can. / Then make a plan. / Get right to it. / And then you’ll do it!” Every time, Little One discovers that when it envisions success and imagines fun, it’s easy to learn to walk, swim, and fly—even if it takes a few tries. Little One goes on to attempt horseback riding and ice skating as well as new languages and earns a new name: “Can Do.” The text is by child psychiatrist Morty Sosland (Can Do and Friends to the Rescue, 2013, etc.); Esther Deblinger (Trauma-Focused CBT for Children and Adolescents, 2019, etc.), his wife, is a clinical psychologist who contributes teacher and parent guidelines for using the book. Many kids need help tackling new challenges, and the book provides helpful modeling of a process for planning, visualizing, and achieving success in kid-friendly language. The appealing illustrations by Sarah Sosland have cartoony charm, nicely capturing Can Do’s activities and expressions, as when the duck is determined to learn to fly.
Positive advice for helping kids set and meet personal goals.Pub Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9768384-4-9
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The greening of Dr. Seuss, in an ecology fable with an obvious message but a savingly silly style. In the desolate land of the Lifted Lorax, an aged creature called the Once-ler tells a young visitor how he arrived long ago in the then glorious country and began manufacturing anomalous objects called Thneeds from "the bright-colored tufts of the Truffula Trees." Despite protests from the Lorax, a native "who speaks for the trees," he continues to chop down Truffulas until he drives away the Brown Bar-ba-loots who had fed on the Tuffula fruit, the Swomee-Swans who can't sing a note for the smogulous smoke, and the Humming-Fish who had hummed in the pond now glumped up with Gluppity-Glupp. As for the Once-let, "1 went right on biggering, selling more Thneeds./ And I biggered my money, which everyone needs" — until the last Truffula falls. But one seed is left, and the Once-let hands it to his listener, with a message from the Lorax: "UNLESS someone like you/ cares a whole awful lot,/ nothing is going to get better./ It's not." The spontaneous madness of the old Dr. Seuss is absent here, but so is the boredom he often induced (in parents, anyway) with one ridiculous invention after another. And if the Once-let doesn't match the Grinch for sheer irresistible cussedness, he is stealing a lot more than Christmas and his story just might induce a generation of six-year-olds to care a whole lot.
Pub Date: Aug. 12, 1971
ISBN: 0394823370
Page Count: 72
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tender bedtime tale set in a too-seldom-seen northern world.
A quiet book for putting young children to bed in a state of snowy wonder.
The magic of the north comes alive in a picture book featuring Inuit characters. In the sky at nighttime, snow falls fast. / … / In the sky at nighttime, a raven roosts atop a tall building. / … / In the sky at nighttime, a mother’s delicate song to her child arises like a gentle breeze.” With the repetition of the simple, titular refrain, the author envisions what happens in a small town at night: Young children see their breath in the cold; a hunter returns on his snowmobile; the stars dazzle in the night sky. A young mother rocks her baby to sleep with a song and puts the tot down with a trio of stuffed animals: hare, polar bear, seal. The picture book evokes a feeling of peace as the street lamps, northern lights, and moon illuminate the snow. The illustrations are noteworthy for the way they meld the old world with what it looks like to be a modern Indigenous person: A sled dog and fur-lined parkas combine easily with the frame houses, a pickup truck, power lines, and mobile-hung crib. By introducing Indigenous characters in an unremarkably familiar setting, the book reaches children who don’t always see themselves in an everyday context.
A tender bedtime tale set in a too-seldom-seen northern world. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-77227-238-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Inhabit Media
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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