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A TRIANGLE FOR ADAORA

AN AFRICAN BOOK OF SHAPES

When Adaora, a little girl of about five, declares that she will not eat paw-paw because to do so would ruin the pretty star-shape in the middle, her cousin Ugo takes her on a quest through their village to find a triangle. Only then, Adaora says, will she eat paw-paw again. The children see shapes aplenty in the objects around them—diamonds on a woman’s wrapper, circles in the elephant drums, a rectangle formed by their uncle’s outstretched arms in his agbada robe—but triangles prove to be elusive until at last they spot their aunt’s triangular headdress. Onyefulu’s (Chidi Only Likes Blue: An African Book of Colors, not reviewed, etc.) photographs of people and objects are colorful and winsome, and sidebars explain the native plants or traditional objects used to form the shapes—about the crescent-shaped plantains: “These look like bananas, but they are really vegetables.” What could otherwise be a charming photo essay is fatally marred by a clunky text (“The musicians were good. So we listened, and when they had finished, we followed them”) and a ridiculously contrived story. How is it that Adaora has reached the ripe old age of five without having ever encountered the concept of square? The notion of teaching shapes through multicultural encounter is praiseworthy, but the book’s subtitle is disingenuous at best, as this “African book of shapes” ventures no further than one unspecified village, and the culture depicted is never identified. Give this one a miss. (Picture book/nonfiction. 3-8)

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-525-46382-8

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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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THE DAY THE CRAYONS QUIT

A comical, fresh look at crayons and color

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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

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