A lovely way to promote acceptance of introverts by themselves and others.
What do you do when no one is watching?
A girl might be shy, but it doesn’t mean she can’t be brave and adventurous when no one can see her! This appealing heroine tries to disappear when other people are around, but when she is alone or with her best friend, she can do almost anything. Rhymed text describes both her attempts to avoid detection (“I hide like the cat alongside the big chair. / I scrunch myself down and pretend I’m not there”) and her plucky, bold side (“I’m brave as a bear in a cave in the dark. / I wrestle gorilla. / I tickle white shark”). Digitally manipulated ink-and-watercolor pictures portray the girl doing her best to remain out of sight in company and shining when she is alone and at her effervescent best. Shyness is presented in a nonjudgmental way here, as a personality characteristic that doesn’t have to be limiting. Although the pictures are sparkling and energetic, it is difficult to ignore the girl’s impossibly long, flowing shoelaces; while an appealing stylistic touch, children accustomed to Velcro will find them distracting, and their parents will find them unsafe. This is a small detail however, and shy children will feel accepted and invigorated by the girl’s ways of accepting and mitigating her reserve.
A lovely way to promote acceptance of introverts by themselves and others. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5303-5
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2013
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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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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