A quirky and buoyant romp through spring.
This wordless Portuguese import celebrates the joy of being outdoors from a distinctly childlike perspective.
In sets of square panels that read like comics, cartoon images featuring thick outlines and limited solid colors introduce a community. We see playground equipment, children at windows, and various trees, all setting the stage for a youngster with pink skin and a black bob to discover that the weather has turned sunny and to head outdoors. But first, shoes! And off the starry-eyed child goes. The landscape alternately fills one large square per page, then several small squares, all conveying a fluidity between reality and perception. The wind picks up, and the child flies through the air, past mountains and birds and over a river, first soaring, then floating like a leaf, finally settling near a clump of forest. On the ground, the child discovers flora and fauna large and small (sometimes distortedly so). The little one enjoys nature with a quirky physicality and soon tumbles down to rest, whereupon a pink-skinned hand reaches into the panel with a steaming mug and a pat on the head. Moreira’s deceptively simple art is expressive, relying less on detail than on shape, line, and movement to evoke the fantastical experience of a beautiful day outside.
A quirky and buoyant romp through spring. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781646143825
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Levine Querido
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color.
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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