For readers with a taste for the bizarre.
Eyebrows run amok.
Bernard wakes up one morning to discover that his normally reasonable eyebrows have gone “BAD.” His dad asks, “What’s with the goofy face?” and his mom warns him to stop “making funny faces.” Bernard assures everyone that it’s not him, it’s the strangely assertive eyebrows. Throughout the day, the brows morph into different zany shapes, expressing emotions that mask Bernard’s actual feelings. His frustrated principal explains that “your eyebrows are your face’s way of telling other people how you feel.” The barber and the doctor can’t help even as the eyebrows become dangerous, growing so long that they trip people and make mischief. A knock on his bedroom door signals the return of his “real” eyebrows, back from vacation. He vows to never again take them for granted, practicing “many exciting expressions that night.” This frankly weird book requires readers willing to go with the outlandish premise. The eyebrows’ eventual tentaclelike movement and ensuing chaos are, as the narrator says, “downright disgusting.” The cartoon illustrations, like the odd premise, are reminiscent of an animated show on commercial TV—one can imagine sound effects. Bernard is biracial, and his family is interracial; his dad and grandpa present white while his mom has brown skin, as do many figures at Bernard’s school.
For readers with a taste for the bizarre. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4197-2537-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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