Add this winsome fable to the shelves of slightly odd picture books
It’s not about running. It’s not exactly about winning. But it is about a race—sort of.
While the jacket blurb calls the protagonists “caribou,” the text refers to them as “guys” in this tale translated from French, which makes one wonder what the French word for “guys” is. So a guy paints a line on the ground, grabs a megaphone and then a pistol. It’s OK, the pistol shoots only a little flag that says “bang.” Six guys with black limbs and antlers, orange faces and bodies, and big googly eyes line up. No. 4 starts too soon. No. 5 tosses a banana peel over his shoulder to tangle up the rest of the participants, who, after receiving medical attention, enlist a truck and a kite to catch up. (“Mr. Banana Peel” finds himself on the wrong end of that kite.) No. 2 wonders why he is running so hard and stops, and next, he’s painting his little house and planting flowers. When No. 6 wins, readers see him on No. 2’s TV screen, while No. 2, in his hammock, looks sublimely content. There’s a bit of misdirection, as with the pistol, and a bit more reflection about who really wants to be in this race after all, so in the end, the story might be aimed more at adults than the children they are reading it to. The collage shapes are pleasing and funny, however, and the googly eyes and placement of the stick limbs convey a surprising amount of emotion.
Add this winsome fable to the shelves of slightly odd picture books . (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-77147-055-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Owlkids Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
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)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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