A sweet celebration of the growth mindset.
A young girl stifled by her perfectionist tendencies learns to find joy in simply doing her best.
Whatever new activity Mira starts she soon quits because of her fear of failure. While other kids forge ahead enthusiastically learning new skills, she makes herself small, until she is “just a shadow.” She regards her peers with wistful envy, thinking how much better they are than her at gymnastics, painting, dancing, and more. Mira is convinced that they succeed because they are naturals. Mired in self-doubt, Mira spends some alone time at the beach, contemplating her situation. Longing to let down her hair, she decides to try some tumbling moves on a piece of driftwood. She wobbles, her long, black braid caught on the wind, and flops. But Mira realizes it feels good to try! She smiles and goes again, stumbling and spinning and bouncing; her fixed mindset melts away as she finds the fun in learning and growing. As Mira blossoms, the red and blue palette of the colored-pencil illustrations, symbolizing her fears, transforms to one of warm, cheerful yellows and oranges. Pray’s rounded forms give both weight and softness to Mira, who appears Asian. The multiracial cast of children is full of energy and their physically expressive activities are captivating.
A sweet celebration of the growth mindset. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: April 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-54116-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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