Callie lives for winter and skating. While friends beg her to play games or make necklaces, she prefers to skate during the day, by moonlight and whenever she can. But then her friends learn about the Honeybrook Ice Skating Contest. Prizes include a free pass to the ice rink, clothes and a limo ride; her friend Liza tells her she’d be a “banana” not to enter. Callie arrives for the contest with friends and parents who tell her good luck and do your best. Watercolor and pen show the spins, the details and expressions of all types of animals. Hues are as bright, fresh and cool as a frozen pond in winter. Callie’s friends cheer and her parents are proud of her, but Callie discovers what the “melting sweetness” of skating and skating alone brings to her. The text makes her understanding of the experience a page turner to the very end. A rare gem of a lesson in today’s competitive, award-seeking society. (Picture book. 4-6)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1042-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2007
From newcomer Braun, a delightful and simple story of how a mother goose goes about producing goslings. The narrator offers a brief physical profile of her farmyard goose, then explains that when Betsy gets the nesting call, she puts together a homey abode of straw and down and fills it with eggs. She sets on the eggs for a month, except for a daily stretch for a nibble and a bath; all the while the gander insures her privacy. And then the goslings emerge. It’s charmingly related in a subdued, musical voice that invests the story with all the natural rhythms of the act. Bendall-Brunello’s artwork is as inviting as the story and makes readers feel very much a part of the process. The earth-toned scenes show all the actions of the geese, creating a lovely link to the natural world and to a way of life that deserves just the kind of admiration generated here. (index) (Picture book. 3-6)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7636-0449-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
family’s lucky / that I didn’t want a cow!" (Picture book. 3-6)
A moderately silly counting book, with slick, cartoony, computer-influenced illustrations opposite each page of short rhymed
text. A girl in overalls buys a chick at the General Store, the kind of shop with ribbons and paint, a barrel of pickles and hams hung from the ceiling. Her older sister, charmed by the black chicks, buys two more, and her father, taken by the striped ones, buys three, and so on through her family, until over 50 baby chickens come home to roost. "There were chickens in the kitchen . . . / . . . There were chickens in my bed!" The pigtailed heroine who started it all ends by noting, puckishly, "I guess my
family’s lucky / that I didn’t want a cow!" (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-56397-800-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
