A solid (if a bit basic) primer.
Schoolyard animals take on a bully—with lemons.
While the other animal “boys and girls” like their classmate Max (a rabbit), Big Jim (a warthog) does not. He relentlessly steals Max’s “good lunch,” making Max cry. Max’s friends encourage multiple tactics to deal with this bully. First, Max simply avoids Big Jim. The bully still takes his lunch. Next, Max buys Big Jim a lemon ice as a peace offering. The bully dumps the beverage over Max’s head (he doesn’t like lemons). Outraged, Max rushes to fight Big Jim. The scuffle is short-lived—and lands Max in the branches of a lemon tree. But Max gets a sneaky idea. The next day, Big Jim steals Max’s lunch as always, but his teeth crunch on a big, citrusy surprise (“Yuck!!!!!!!!!!”). The victory has Max coining a new adage: “A lemon a day keeps the bully away.” But what about Big Jim? With a vocabulary of around 90 words and at most five lines of text per page (eight words per line), the text maintains accessibility to beginning readers. Wilhem’s cartoony watercolors are soft against the white backgrounds, adding a friendly quality even to the tense scenes. A scripted scenario about how to deal with a real-life bully in the backmatter expands upon the story’s lessons. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 62% of actual size.)
A solid (if a bit basic) primer. (Early reader. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3933-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.
After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.
Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9780063436121
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026
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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