A playful trip down memory lane that attempts to bridge generations of readers.
Kids are invited to rediscover the quirks of the 1990s as they travel through the alphabet letter by letter.
Though the 1990s might feel very recent to parents today, their kids may be unfamiliar with many of that decade’s cultural touchpoints. Knuckman’s debut picture book introduces 26 separate items or settings that were once commonplace, including arcades, Blockbuster Video, chat rooms, and more. While not all of the references are exclusive to the ’90s (friends and homework endure), they paint a nostalgic picture of a bygone decade with a focus on leisure and playtime for children. Many of the references are to technologies that have gone extinct, like dial-up internet and landline telephones. (“T is for Tamagotchi. We’d hatch with delight. Loving each beep, morning, noon, and night.”) Popular media—like the video game Oregon Trail and The X-Files TV series—and trends in fashion also appear as running themes. This alphabet primer will delight middle-aged parents rosily regarding their own childhoods, but younger readers may not be as invested. Despite the emphasis on “not hav[ing] screens to swipe at all day” and the fact that “U” stands for “unplugged,” many of the letters invoke items like arcades and Napster, which once faced similar criticisms from technologically averse adults. Knuckman’s illustrations engagingly play with the candy colors and crazy patterns of the decade.
A playful trip down memory lane that attempts to bridge generations of readers.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2025
ISBN: 9798991963909
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Knuckman Media Partners
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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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