by Jairo Buitrago ; illustrated by Rafael Yockteng ; translated by Elisa Amado ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2017
Emotionally resonant in the loveliest of ways.
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A lion accompanies a child on a walk home during a day in the city in this wistful tale of parental absence.
The story begins with a simple gesture: a nameless, light-skinned child in a school uniform holds out a flower to a lion. “Keep me company on the way home,” says the child. The lion then follows the child, terrifying adults—and delighting other kids—at school and on the city’s streets all the way home. The pair dashes by crowded buses and cars, stops to pick up the child-narrator’s younger sibling, and even shops at “the store that won’t give us credit anymore.” (Fortunately, the ferocious feline can help with the last difficulty.) At home, things start to settle down as the trio prepares a meal and waits for Mama to return from the factory. The day soon ends, and the lion departs, though the child-narrator hopes it returns when called. Similar to Buitrago and Yockteng’s previous collaborations, the story ends on a poignant and unexpected note. The first-person narration tugs readers along with ease, deftly eliciting compassion from the performance of seemingly mundane tasks. Yockteng’s muted illustrations depict the city as full of cracked buildings, drab colors, and expression captured in movement. Minor details in the pictures, including environmental print in Spanish, take readers in different directions all at once, adding to the low-key narration.
Emotionally resonant in the loveliest of ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-55498-857-0
Page Count: 35
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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by Hoda Kotb ; illustrated by Chloe Dominique ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Pleasant enough but not particularly original.
Uplifting messages of positivity from the Today show anchor.
Hope springs eternal, so the saying goes. Kotb agrees, here delivering to children the cheery news that hope lives inside all of them and that whatever they might wish for can be theirs. All they need is a sunny outlook, and the possibilities for happy outcomes are virtually endless. Children’s dreams can be in-the-moment ones—like purple ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry—or more far-ranging ones, such as growing tall enough to reach that high shelf easily or for hair that’s long enough to braid. It doesn’t matter, the author reassures young readers. Your aspirations will be realized, so don’t give up on them—just keep believing in them and, most of all, in yourself. Throughout, Kotb calls hope a rainbow, a feeling, a gift, and a wish. Hope is “new friends you’ll find— / friends who are loving and funny and kind.” Hope is “practicing your heart out, letter by letter.” The book’s overarching theme is upbeat, but its bouncy rhyming text is clumsy. The child-appealing illustrations are colorful and lively, though they have a generic look. The cast of wide-eyed characters is racially diverse; some have visible disabilities.
Pleasant enough but not particularly original. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593624128
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016
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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