A gentle exploration of cultural traditions.
A child finds a way to make her friends understand the importance of a family rule.
While Mina’s pals enjoy coming over to her apartment for snacks, they don’t love her family’s shoes-off rule. Mina decides to avoid confrontation and opts to say nothing when everyone wears their shoes inside. Later, as Mina and her seamstress mother clean the shoe prints off the floor, she asks, “Mama, can we just wear shoes inside? None of my friends have a shoes-off rule at home.” Her mother responds with empathy but urges Mina to think about the practice as a way of expressing respect for their ancestors, their home, and each other. After some reflection and a little collaboration, Mina comes up with a creative way to help her friends follow the rule while also learning about their customs. With sweetness, this story conveys how difficult it can be to maintain cultural traditions, especially when the pressure to assimilate comes from well-meaning friends. Still, these customs connect us to our past, and, as Mina finds, they can also be a way to honor those we love. Yim’s pastel and pencil artwork captures Mina’s compact apartment and vibrant community with coziness and warmth. Mina and her mother have tan skin and black hair; other characters are diverse.
A gentle exploration of cultural traditions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9780593649626
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note.
Little Honey Bunny Funnybunny loves baseball almost as much as she loves her big brother P.J.—though it’s a close-run thing.
Readers familiar with the pranks P.J. plays on his younger sibling in older episodes of the series (most illustrated by Roger Bollen) will be amused—and perhaps a little confused—to see him in the role of perfect big brother after meeting his swaddled little sister for the first time in mama’s lap. But here, along with being a constant companion and “always happy to see her,” he cements his heroic status in her eyes by hitting a home run for his baseball team and then patiently teaching her how to play T-ball. After carefully coaching her and leading her through warm-up exercises, he even sits in the stands, loudly cheering her on as she scores the winning run in her own very first game. “‘You are the best brother a bunny could ever have!’” she burbles. This tale’s a tad blander compared with others centered on P.J. and his sister, but it’s undeniably cheery, with text well structured for burgeoning readers. The all-smiles animal cast in Bowers’ cartoon art features a large and diversely hued family of bunnies sporting immense floppy ears as well as a multispecies crowd of furry onlookers equally varied of color, with one spectator in a wheelchair.
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217032464
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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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