I'M NOT A MOUSE

Name: I'M NOT A MOUSE
Author: Evgenia Golubeva
ISBN: 978-1-78628-464-8

by Evgenia Golubeva ; illustrated by Evgenia Golubeva ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 2020

This entertaining, ebulliently illustrated story will make grown-ups pause before nicknaming somebody without their approval.

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For all those kids who are tired of the nicknames their families give them.

A young, black, bespectacled child with hair in two big curly puffballs tells readers, “I love my mom”—but not Mom’s nickname for the child: Mouse. Whenever Mom uses that nickname, the kid transforms. Suddenly, this backpack-wearing child becomes a purple mouse, wearing miniature glasses and clothes but lugging a yellow backpack that hasn’t shrunk. The protagonist then recalls all of the instances when Mom has interrupted play and activities by inconveniently changing her offspring into this purple rodent—which sometimes puts the child in treacherous, life-threatening situations, such as when Mom causes a transformation in front of the family’s orange cat. Frustrated, the child finally screams, “I’m not a MOUSE,” and then ignores Mom until she uses the child’s given name: Olivia. The rebellion works, but Olivia soon realizes that plenty of other kids—even grown kids—deal with the same problem. Golubeva’s bold, colorful illustrations effectively capture both Olivia’s conundrum and the child’s frustration with Mom’s annoying habit. A double-page spread in a city park reveals diverse children and nickname-granting caregivers, the kids all amusingly transformed. Frontmatter pages feature Mouse in many different situations, and corresponding backmatter pages add further humor by showing all the other things nicknames have transformed kids into, some non-English languages adding further diversity.

This entertaining, ebulliently illustrated story will make grown-ups pause before nicknaming somebody without their approval. (Picture book. 4-8 )

Pub Date: June 15, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-78628-464-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Child's Play

Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

- BOOK REVIEW
THE ENCHANTED FOREST
by Samantha Chagollan ; illustrated by Evgenia Golubeva

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LOVE FROM THE CRAYONS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 24, 2019

As ephemeral as a valentine.

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

- BOOK REVIEW
BATH TIME FOR THE CRAYONS
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

- BOOK REVIEW
GOODNIGHT, CRAYONS
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

- BOOK REVIEW
NO SAM! AND THE MEOW OF DECEPTION
by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Mike Lowery

- SEEN & HEARD
Daywalt, Jeffers Collaborate on New ‘Crayons’ Book

- SEEN & HEARD
Daywalt, Jeffers Collaborate on New ‘Crayons’ Book

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)