Paula’s final declaration that “I’ll be her friend forever” shows that she’s learned a valuable lesson, one that listeners...
Teasing tests the friendship of two young girls.
According to narrator Paula, Maggie and she have “been friends forever.” Proof of that assertion starts on the endpapers—a crayon drawing of the two friends—followed by illustrations that look like old-style photographs on the verso and title page. Whether smiling out from a class photo or pictured as infants, the two seem completely simpatico. But then bullying rears its ugly head. A classmate opines that Maggie is “too big.” Her size isn’t surprising: she’s an elephant. But that unkind comment leads Paula, a beaver, to re-evaluate her friend in an unfortunately stereotypical but all too believable way. Maggie is “clumsy,” terrible at hide-and-seek, and wears her clothes too tight. Harrison’s brightly colored acrylic paintings amplify the emotions, showing mean girl Veronica (a sleek terrier) with squinting eyes and smug smile and pushover Paula casting a regretful look back at Maggie. Harrison’s straightforward, first-person text, while understated, also conveys a wealth of emotion. The use of exclamation points, ellipses, and italics guides readers to give the words a distinctly conversational tone. Luckily for Paula, Maggie is bighearted enough to forgive her friend’s betrayal and strong enough to defend her when necessary.
Paula’s final declaration that “I’ll be her friend forever” shows that she’s learned a valuable lesson, one that listeners would do well to heed. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-42916-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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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
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