A worthwhile fable for sporty, ambitious young readers.
A young Black girl used to taking home first prizes must adjust to someone else getting the gold in this picture book.
“The amazingly talented Jackie J. Spade, a star in the making in just the sixth grade,” has a big race coming up, but she’s not worried. Already a prizewinner in karate and ice skating, dark-skinned, Afro puff–wearing Jackie also “swings a mean bat” and wins spelling bees, science fairs, and chess matches. Readers get little information about Jackie outside of Ferguson’s brisk, rhyming verse about her long streak of achievements, but her smile is bright. Debut illustrator Aryutova’s well-composed digital images in warm tones and textures show happy, adorable Jackie excitedly accepting awards. How will all this victory inform Jackie’s reaction to the inevitable loss? When a Black girl wins first place in the 200-meter dash and Jackie gets second, it’s a horrible shock. A crying Jackie collapses in an effective two-page spread that offers opportunities for conversations between adult readers and children about her feelings. But then Jackie “dusts herself off and wipes tears from her face / she walks right on over and says ‘good race!’ ” The value of sports for all competitors—not to mention Jackie’s hard work—could have been emphasized in the story a little more. Still, the cheerful championing of good sportsmanship among peers and the depiction of mutual recognition and encouragement between young Black girls make this a satisfying tale.
A worthwhile fable for sporty, ambitious young readers.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-75221-1
Page Count: 36
Publisher: F. Ferguson Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 26, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Earnest and well meaning but not quite a touchdown.
In Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Hurts’ motivational picture book, a youngster rebounds from disappointment.
As Jalen heads off on his first day of school, he daydreams about joining the football team, but his friend Trey soon breaks the bad news. The garden club needed more space for vegetables, so the football field was used for planting. There will be no football this year. Jalen is despondent, but his teachers Mrs. Lee and Mr. Barry and bodega owner Mr. Muhammad offer guidance that spurs him and his friends into positive action. They work to flip a nearby empty lot into a football field, with Jalen echoing his mentors’ adages. Once the field is complete, Jalen feels a swell of pride in his and his friends’ work. While the idea of kids working together to effect change is a laudable one, the bland, wordy storytelling won’t inspire young people or hold their attention. Tired, cliched inspirational comments peppered throughout often slow down the narrative, and many adult readers will find the premise—a school dropping a high-interest sports program in favor of a community garden—wildly unrealistic. Though the illustrations are colorful, with a Disney Junior charm, strange stylistic choices, such as signs with odd combinations of scribbles instead of letters, give them an unpolished look. Like Hurts, Jalen is Black; his community is diverse.
Earnest and well meaning but not quite a touchdown. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9798217040308
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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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BOOK REVIEW
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