A visual delight—and vindication for night owls.
Mr. Chow has a dilemma: He “lives for the night,” but his customers expect a grocery store to be open early.
Buoyant, colorful artwork shows the elder enjoying Taipei’s nightlife but snoozing when he should be running his market the following day. By the time Mr. Chow finally opens for the day, angry customers are lined up around the block, and he’s late with his preparations; perhaps worst of all, he’s too busy to play with his grandchildren. His rushing leads to a disastrous mess, and he admits that he could use some help. After soliciting advice from other neighborhood store owners, Mr. Chow realizes that the best advice is to “try something new.” With help from his grandchildren, an evening of work dismantling indoor store fixtures and repurposing them results in an outdoor evening market. Lighting up the night, its lively, festive atmosphere with food booths and games attract a bevy of happy families. And thus, Sun Li tells us, Mr. Chow’s grocery becomes Taiwan’s first night market. Eloquent but child-friendly, food-related imagery enlivens the text (the moon is compared to a “wok full of simmering oil,” the sun to a “melting mango”), while smiles on inanimate objects, from doors to lanterns, create an enchantingly sweet world. Though Mr. Chow’s story is fictional, an author’s note offers more insight into Taiwanese night markets.
A visual delight—and vindication for night owls. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9780593887035
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it...
The prolific Gibbons tackles fruits—how they grow, their parts, and what portions we eat.
Beginning with facts about perennial and annual fruits and how many servings children should aim for each day, the book then looks at how fruits can grow on plants, bushes, vines, and trees. Good vocabulary is introduced and defined along the way—botanist, pollination, cultivated. The middle of the book is taken up by individual looks at 13 different kinds of fruits that show cutaway views labeled with parts, the whole plant/bush/vine/tree, and some of the popular varieties—for grapes, golden muscat, red flame, and concord. This is followed by a discussion of growing seasons and climates, large farms versus backyard ones, harvesting fruit and getting it to market, and some other fruits that were not featured in the text, including star fruits, apricots, and persimmons. A final page lists more fruit facts and two websites (one for the United States, one for Canada) about food guidelines. The text sometimes gets lost in Gibbons’ busy and full pages, and while her illustrations are detailed and specific for each type of fruit, the watercolors won’t make mouths water.
This lacks the information of other nonfiction titles and the pizzazz of April Pulley Sayre’s Go, Go, Grapes! (2012), but it may be just the ticket before a school trip to a farm. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3204-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
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