Doesn’t stand out among the many introductions to Halloween’s delights.
Chloe Zoe in back, exploring Halloween’s delights with her friends.
The anthropomorphic elephant girl is enthusiastic about all that this “autumn tradition” has to offer—carving jack-o-lanterns, apple cider, homemade doughnuts, decorating, wearing a costume, and trick-or-treating—but she’s a little leery of the old house on the corner where a friend told her an evil witch lives. Her friends Mary Margaret, a crocodile, and George, a giraffe, try to tell her that witches aren’t real, but she’s unconvinced. Still, the three have a blast with their families as they go door to door gathering tasty treats and seeing other kids’ costumes…until the only house left is the witch’s. Chloe Zoe loses her cool, only regaining it with the help of her father’s words of wisdom and her brave friends’ hands in hers. Smith’s artwork incorporates textured papers with lots of competing shapes and patterns, which can sometimes make it difficult to parse the illustrations. Also, with a few exceptions when Chloe Zoe is dealing with her witch fears, the characters’ facial expressions are static. It’s Thanksgiving, Chloe Zoe! publishes simultaneously; its plot revolves around an inedible pumpkin pie she bakes with Grammy, Grammy’s failing eyesight and Chloe Zoe’s illiteracy combining to mix cayenne with cinnamon.
Doesn’t stand out among the many introductions to Halloween’s delights. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1210-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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