Pleasant fare for scheduled children.
To ballet or to baseball? What’s a girl to do?
Nini loves ballet and her ballet outfits. Unfortunately, as her mother reminds her, it is time for baseball and her baseball uniform. Nini does not like anything about baseball—not her glove and not the field. The illustrations demonstrate her passive resistance in amusing vignettes that depict her practicing ballet moves, looking up at the sky, and flopped on the grass, a thoroughly ignored baseball next to her in each one. Her coach and her teammates remind her that baseball is a team sport and that everyone has to do their “best.” Then the coach has a little heart-to-heart with Nini about how ballet practice can improve performance on the baseball field. At the next game, her team is leading, but then an opposing player hits the ball into the outfield, where Nini and her glove are waiting. Yes, it is a perfect ending for a baseball player who knows how to plié and hold her glove in the right spot at the right time. Nini, who has light-brown skin and fluffy brown hair, shares her round face and button eyes with all the other children, who are a mix of colors. The softly focused line-and-color illustrations highlight the yellow-and-blue baseball uniforms and the green baseball field.
Pleasant fare for scheduled children. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-58089-939-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
The snappy text will get toes tapping, but the information it carries is limited.
Dancing is one of the most universal elements of cultures the world over.
In onomatopoeic, rhyming text, Bolling encourages readers to dance in styles including folk dance, classical ballet, breakdancing, and line dancing. Read aloud, the zippy text will engage young children: “Tappity Tap / Fingers Snap,” reads the rhyme on the double-page spread for flamenco; “Jiggity-Jig / Zig-zag-zig” describes Irish step dancing. The ballet pages stereotypically include only children in dresses or tutus, but one of these dancers wears hijab. Overall, children included are racially diverse and vary in gender presentation. Diaz’s illustrations show her background in animated films; her active child dancers generally have the large-eyed sameness of cartoon characters. The endpapers, with shoes and musical instruments, could become a matching game with pages in the book. The dances depicted are described at the end, including kathak from India and kuku from Guinea, West Africa. Unfortunately, these explanations are quite rudimentary. Kathak dancers use their facial expressions extensively in addition to the “movements of their hands and their jingling feet,” as described in the book. Although today kuku is danced at all types of celebrations in several countries, it was once done after fishing, an activity acknowledged in the illustrations but not mentioned in the explanatory text.
The snappy text will get toes tapping, but the information it carries is limited. (Informational picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63592-142-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An early reader that kids will want to befriend.
In an odd-couple pairing of Bear and Chipmunk, only one friend is truly happy to spend the day at the beach.
“Not me!” is poor Chipmunk’s lament each time Bear expresses the pleasure he takes in sunning, swimming, and other activities at the beach. While controlled, repetitive text makes the story accessible to new readers, slapstick humor characterizes the busy watercolor-and-ink illustrations and adds interest. Poor Chipmunk is pinched by a crab, buried in sand, and swept upside down into the water, to name just a few mishaps. Although other animal beachgoers seem to notice Chipmunk’s distress, Bear cheerily goes about his day and seems blithely ignorant of his friend’s misfortunes. The playful tone of the illustrations helps soften the dynamic so that it doesn’t seem as though Chipmunk is in grave danger or that Bear is cruel. As they leave at the end of the book Bear finally asks, “Why did you come?” and Chipmunk’s sweet response caps off the day with a warm sunset in the background.
An early reader that kids will want to befriend. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3546-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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