This visually inviting but message-heavy story struggles to communicate its takeaway clearly.
A flighty donkey learns a lesson.
Ugo loves life on the farm. It’s a calm place, perpetually bathed in soft golden sunlight. He knows the daily rhythms of the other barn dwellers, and he watches the trees’ seasonal cycles with appreciation. Unfortunately for Ugo, a noisy little monkey named ShinShin shows up. This bouncy busybody serves as Ugo’s guide when he delivers grain to market. ShinShin perches on Ugo’s back, urging him on with no allowance for daydreams or diversions. The monkey literally holds a carrot on a stick in front of Ugo’s nose to force him to move forward. Ugo, frustrated and rebellious, throws the painfully proverbial monkey off his back but ends up falling into a deep well. In quiet isolation, awaiting rescue by the brown-skinned farmer, he discovers a “deep silence and stillness he never knew existed.” Ugo’s experience gestures at something meaningful about heeding one’s inner voice and channeling that understanding into staying on one’s path, but between the dancing monkey, the comedic circumstances of Ugo’s rescue, and the story’s speedy, simplified resolution, its potential profundity is hard to pin down. Matias’ cut-paper collage artwork is impressive nonetheless, depicting natural textures deftly and expressing depth of scenery with style.
This visually inviting but message-heavy story struggles to communicate its takeaway clearly. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2026
ISBN: 9781250359674
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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
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