These trucks are stuck in a concept that isn’t up to speed, with a plot that ultimately sputters and runs out of gas.
An Asian boy named Mike narrates a guide to finding and taming a truck as an unusual type of pet.
In this companion to How to Train a Train (2013), Eaton and Rocco again imagine hunting and capturing a huge transportation vehicle, taming it, and taking it home. Narrator Mike has his own garage and owns two dump trucks and a fire engine as his personal pet trucks. He advises readers on various types of trucks and recommends looking for a truck “in its native habitat.” Mike explains how to catch a truck by using a trail of orange traffic cones and recommends finding the pet truck a “useful project” and other trucks for playtime. Seven children of different ethnicities find and name their own pet trucks and then watch as their pets work together in an imaginative construction project in a way that’s described as “pure magic.” Several illustrations of the children may have safety-conscious adults sucking their teeth, with some kids riding on top of moving vehicles and others standing perilously near to trucks in motion. An extra-large trim size accommodates the big rigs, but the human characters are proportionally tiny and somewhat lost in the design. The trucks themselves don’t work visually either as pets or as individual characters. Their headlights serve as eyes, but the vehicles never seem alive or particularly appealing.
These trucks are stuck in a concept that isn’t up to speed, with a plot that ultimately sputters and runs out of gas. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-8065-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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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BOOK REVIEW
This warm family story is a splendid showcase for the combined talents of Medina, a Pura Belpré award winner, and Dominguez,...
Abuela is coming to stay with Mia and her parents. But how will they communicate if Mia speaks little Spanish and Abuela, little English? Could it be that a parrot named Mango is the solution?
The measured, evocative text describes how Mia’s español is not good enough to tell Abuela the things a grandmother should know. And Abuela’s English is too poquito to tell Mia all the stories a granddaughter wants to hear. Mia sets out to teach her Abuela English. A red feather Abuela has brought with her to remind her of a wild parrot that roosted in her mango trees back home gives Mia an idea. She and her mother buy a parrot they name Mango. And as Abuela and Mia teach Mango, and each other, to speak both Spanish and English, their “mouths [fill] with things to say.” The accompanying illustrations are charmingly executed in ink, gouache, and marker, “with a sprinkling of digital magic.” They depict a cheery urban neighborhood and a comfortable, small apartment. Readers from multigenerational immigrant families will recognize the all-too-familiar language barrier. They will also cheer for the warm and loving relationship between Abuela and Mia, which is evident in both text and illustrations even as the characters struggle to understand each other. A Spanish-language edition, Mango, Abuela, y yo, gracefully translated by Teresa Mlawer, publishes simultaneously.
This warm family story is a splendid showcase for the combined talents of Medina, a Pura Belpré award winner, and Dominguez, an honoree. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6900-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
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BOOK REVIEW
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