Sweet stuff—lost and found.
A piglet who constantly loses his belongings regains them with help from an old friend.
After Pablo misplaces toys, backpacks, hats, and swim trunks, often multiple times, his folks help locate them—frequently with great difficulty. His parents are shown descending under the street, scaling a tree, and entering a fox’s den to retrieve Pablo’s possessions. Busy and distracted, Pablo sometimes finds even longer-lost things while searching for recently misplaced ones. Finally, his exasperated parents declare that Pablo will just have to find his missing items himself. Pablo’s predicament worsens when he can’t locate any of his most treasured possessions for his classroom’s upcoming show-and-tell session. The narrative takes a wonderfully fantastical turn when Rocco, Pablo’s long-forgotten painted rock, offers advice from the piglet’s closet. Rocco explains that many of Pablo’s possessions have relocated to a place where they can “get support and hang out with other lost things.” The duo head to a vacant building in town, where a vast array of objects, including Pablo’s things, socialize with music and conversation. Pablo’s items agree to give the piglet another chance, and they return home to Pablo’s frantic, then rejoicing parents. Youngsters will appreciate a final vignette that shows that adults often lose and find things, too: Mom’s missing teacup’s seen at the lost things club, chatting with Pablo’s left-behind water bottle. Sala’s amusing mixed-media illustrations deftly demonstrate the characters’ activities, emotions, and community-building skills.
Sweet stuff—lost and found. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781419766916
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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
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
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