An enjoyable canine tale with just enough pathos and plenty of heart.
A rescue puppy story serves as a broad-based anti-bullying and anti-discrimination lesson for grade schoolers in this debut children’s book.
Hegle introduces this tale with an optimistic vision of the future. The year is 2050 and Bella, a young wheelchair-bound girl, tells her adoptive mother about a “hologram movie” she watched in school showing how in the past individuals went to war over religion, women were treated badly, and people of color were hated. She asks how that all changed. Her mother explains that when people read the story of Ellie Bleu, an abandoned puppy, they began to alter their attitudes. Jumping back to the past, the author begins Ellie’s true story, delightfully written in the first-person voice of the canine. She is, in fact, the puppy Hegle adopted. As a pup, Ellie was first adopted by a family that turned out to be abusive. After a few months, she was literally thrown away, tossed over a fence on a freezing, snowy night. Ellie wound up in a Humane Society animal shelter, but she was labeled “timid and aggressive.” Worse, she was a pit bull mix, shunned by most prospective adopters because of the breed’s reputation for being dangerous. Her only act of aggression occurred when she was injured, cold, and terrified and tried to elude a dog catcher. Still, Ellie was scheduled to be euthanized. And then something magnificent happened. In this poignant story, Ellie’s gentle voice captures the full range of her emotions, from frightened puppy—“My legs started shaking and I shuddered all over. Then I laid down in the back corner, as far away from the door as I could”—to joyful family member. The uplifting tale should appeal to both children and their parents. Debut illustrator Weaver’s high-quality, full-page images, with warm earth tones, implicitly reinforce the story’s positive message of inclusivity, as articulated in the beginning by Bella’s mother: “Every dog or person, boy or girl, are all about love and…everyone deserves the same chances.”
An enjoyable canine tale with just enough pathos and plenty of heart.Pub Date: Nov. 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73315-680-6
Page Count: 38
Publisher: WoW! Publishing and Promotions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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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