Jenkins and Yum perfectly portray the anxiety and false bravado of this delightful cast of characters who ultimately find...
With the help of his two dogs, a boy attempts to tackle his fears—both imagined and real.
Opening the book is a list of four scary things: monsters, ghosts, witches, and trolls. At first the boy doesn’t want to reveal them to his dogs, a pug and a bull terrier. “Can’t tell you. It’s too much terror.” But the bull terrier persists, and the two discuss each creature’s scariness quotient. This hilarious back-and-forth conversation occurs in dialogue bubbles as the quizzical pug looks on. The boy then turns to scary “stuff that definitely exists,” such as his nasty cousin, the bossy crossing guard, big growling dogs, and swimming pools that might have sharks in them. The terrier breezily brushes away each fear until the boy mentions the dark. “Okay,” says the terrier. “Now that’s a little scary.” As the boy says, “Nameless evil could be lurking” there. The page turn reveals the boy and both dogs on a pitch-black spread with only eyeballs and dialogue to convey the heightened fear they are experiencing. The boy’s solution is obvious but feels absolutely perfect given the scenario. Readers and their grown-ups will howl with laughter at the dry humor and the detailed illustrations that capture every eye roll and skeptical sideways glance.
Jenkins and Yum perfectly portray the anxiety and false bravado of this delightful cast of characters who ultimately find fun in the scary stuff. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-374-30000-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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