Determination and perseverance—both girl’s and squirrel’s—are celebrated.
An enterprising girl meets her match in an even more enterprising squirrel.
Pearl, illustrated with black hair and eyes and beige skin, has just built herself three birdhouses. “One looked like a house. / One looked like a tube. / One looked like a teacup”—because it is a teacup, and it’s the one Pearl is most proud of. While the house-shaped feeder and the tube feeder attract appropriate (and accurately illustrated) birds, the teacup, filled with peanuts, attracts a squirrel—who eats them all. Irritated, Pearl rigs up a taller contraption to foil the squirrel, but the squirrel defeats this easily. Finally, after building a Rube Goldberg–like obstacle course of things Pearl keeps in her “box of useful odds and ends”—which the squirrel navigates with ease—Pearl’s irritation turns to admiration. When she discovers that the squirrel is, in fact, a mama with three kits, the friendship is sealed. Barrett’s high-energy narrative is filled with action verbs that give it a pleasingly crisp forward movement while Andriani’s illustrations are just as pleasingly varied in their presentation and keep up perfectly with the text. (Of note is the sequence in which nine separate iterations of the squirrel navigate each element of the ninja course.) This can-do story is delivered with great good humor, and it has the added benefit of ending with empathy rather than outright victory. Backmatter delivers more factual information about squirrels.
Determination and perseverance—both girl’s and squirrel’s—are celebrated. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4251-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
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
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet.
A ghost longs to be scary, but none of the creepy personas she tries on fit.
Misty, a feline ghost with big green eyes and long whiskers, wants to be the frightening presence that her haunted house calls for, but sadly, she’s “too cute to be spooky.” She dons toilet paper to resemble a mummy, attempts to fly on a broom like a witch, and howls at the moon like a werewolf. Nothing works. She heads to a Halloween party dressed reluctantly as herself. When she arrives, her friends’ joyful screams reassure her that she’s great just as she is. Sadler’s message, though a familiar one, is delivered effectively in a charming, ghostly package. Misty truly is too precious to be frightening. Laberis depicts an endearingly spooky, all-animal cast—a frog witch, for instance, and a crocodilian mummy. Misty’s sidekick, a cheery little bat who lends support throughout, might be even more adorable than she is. Though Misty’s haunted house is filled with cobwebs and surrounded by jagged, leafless trees, the charming characters keep things from ever getting too frightening. The images will encourage lingering looks. Clearly, there’s plenty that makes Misty special just as she is—a takeaway that adults sharing the book with their little ones should be sure to drive home.
Too cute to be spooky indeed but most certainly sweet. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593702901
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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