A warm and reassuring tale about understanding grief.
In author Erin Rosenblum and illustrator Aubree Rosenblum’s comforting picture book, three young animal friends explore the many shapes that grief can take.
A bunny named Peanut Butter and Donner, a parakeet, can sense that their duck friend, Annie, isn’t her upbeat self. “Are you okay Annie?” Peanut Butter asks. Annie sighs, eyes downcast, and reveals that someone she loves is gone. Her friends don’t offer hollow cheerfulness or quick fixes. Instead, Peanut Butter “sat down beside her, and gave her some time.” Through shared memories, quiet company, and gentle love, they learn that “it’s okay to laugh and have fun. And it’s okay to cry when the tears start to run.” Healing unfolds slowly, and “however you grieve is right just for you.” The text also acknowledges that feelings of loss can be felt about other things, such as upheaval due to natural disasters, disrupted routines, or sudden goodbyes. The empathetic focus effectively honors varying emotional responses and the importance of being present with someone who’s in pain. The friendly, rounded artwork radiates warmth and comfort, with bright colors adding movement and energy, reminiscent of a mobile gently spinning above a crib. Although the backgrounds sometimes fade into a vague haze that doesn’t reward multiple readings, the simplicity keeps the spotlight on the characters’ emotional journeys.
A warm and reassuring tale about understanding grief.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2026
ISBN: 9798999649102
Page Count: 36
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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