An engaging but rudimentary tale about jobs, showcasing Black parents who support their child’s aspirations.
A Black girl dreams of professions in alphabetical order in this picture book by a mother and daughter team.
Kingston, a girl with Afro puffs, explains that Career Day at her school featured people with all sorts of jobs. “The Activist is for the people. / The Banker really loves math,” she notes. Can Kingston be a teacher, just like her mom? “Dream, baby, dream, and you will see,” her parents say. As Kingston beams sweetly at their bedtime kisses, they leave her to envision her future: astronaut, basketball player, chef. Kingston’s dreams of Black professionals feature childlike adults, and the renderings of her job possibilities are simplified. A female chef stands in a kitchen as cookies bake, a male teacher lectures, a girl entrepreneur sells lemonade at a cardboard stand, and a short-haired librarian shelves books. But what is a kinesiologist? The picture shows a doctor with a hand on a patient’s knee. And what does a quahogger do? No clams are featured in the image. Adkins and Paj’s sketchy, cute digital pencil cartoons portray emotions and gestures effectively with a few lines—though as the alphabet proceeds, some professions prove harder to explain in a single image. Authors GirlKing and Kingston do not include any aftermatter that offers insights into job responsibilities. Nevertheless, parents seeking a simple visual starting place to discuss vocations may find the story’s brevity and cartoon shorthand appealing.
An engaging but rudimentary tale about jobs, showcasing Black parents who support their child’s aspirations.Pub Date: March 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-57-866771-3
Page Count: 38
Publisher: Early Morning Cocktail
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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