Fun and frolicsome, though not as grounded in the natural world as earlier books in the series.
In Gallois’ picture book, a family of opossums attend a disco and offer readers an alphabet’s worth of words to consider.
Mama opossum and her three joeys “awaken” as night falls. They “blink,” “clean” their teeth, “dress,” and “emerge” from their treehouse burrow. (While the majority of the text is presented in white font, the verbs are mauve-colored and bolded, catching the reader’s attention as the author proffers examples beginning with each letter of the alphabet.) After stopping to “gather” and “hunt,” the opossums proceed to a subterranean disco (hosted beneath a giant toadstool), where they dance the night away with other nocturnal creatures: “Opossums strut and shake their tails / till sun rays light the skies. / They thank the DJ, rubbing sleep / from tired, droopy eyes.” Gallois narrates in rhyming couplets that, in addition to the alphabetically arranged verbs, render the story somewhat underwhelming, despite the lively concept. Bobrek’s double-page illustrations are masterful, lending storybook personality to anthropomorphized animals (treated more naturalistically in previous Awesome Opossum Stories), offering young readers a recurring character (a frog) to find, and shading each scene with sublime, hazy hues that prove especially striking in the interplay of disco lights. One qualm: The properties of action verbs are never made explicit, and several of the chosen words are actually stative verbs (fail, know, prefer, understand) rather than action verbs.
Fun and frolicsome, though not as grounded in the natural world as earlier books in the series.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781954322257
Page Count: 35
Publisher: Moonflower Press
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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