Plenty of appeal for pets and the small people who love them.
Best friends do everything together…right?
“Mr. Fluffernutter and I are best friends. // We love spending time together / doing all of our favorite things.” A light-skinned girl with two puffy, pompom ponytails and her Siamese cat, Mr. Fluffernutter, draw pictures (he bats at the crayons) and chase butterflies. The tea party that follows seems less to Mr. Fluffernutter’s liking (perhaps it’s the hat). He doesn’t look to be enjoying swinging or swimming either. His little girl just doesn’t understand why he would walk away from playing baby in the pram (he’s wearing a bonnet, of course). Seems he’d rather watch the goldfish swim (which she finds boring). His stinky choice of lunch and insistence on lengthy bouts of yarn play make the girl question their friendship. Maybe they’ll have fun alone—but they don’t, a fact made plain in both expression and body language in a double-page spread of vignettes. They find they really do enjoy doing everything together—but sometimes they “just do it a little differently.” Olson applies the same sweetly dry humor to feline-human relations that she did to ninja bunnies. Her pudgy, watercolor-and-pencil illustrations smartly convey the depth of the bond between these two. Young listeners might not catch Mr. Fluffernutter’s discontent at first glance, but his expressions tell all for the observant tot.
Plenty of appeal for pets and the small people who love them. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-75496-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 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 disappointing follow-up.
Inventor Izzy Gizmo is back in this sequel to her eponymous debut (2017).
While busily inventing one day, Izzy receives an invitation from the Genius Guild to their annual convention. Though Izzy’s “inventions…don’t always work,” Grandpa (apparently her sole caregiver) encourages her to go. The next day they undertake a long journey “over fields, hills, and waves” and “mile after mile” to isolated Technoff Isle. There, Izzy finds she must compete against four other kids to create the most impressive machine. The colorful, detail-rich illustrations chronicle how poor Izzy is thwarted at every turn by Abi von Lavish, a Veruca Salt–esque character who takes all the supplies for herself. But when Abi abandons her project, Izzy salvages the pieces and decides to take Grandpa’s advice to create a machine that “can really be put to good use.” A frustrated Izzy’s impatience with a friend almost foils her chance at the prize, but all’s well that ends well. There’s much to like: Brown-skinned inventor girl Izzy is an appealing character, it’s great to see a nurturing brown-skinned male caregiver, the idea of an “Invention Convention” is fun, and a sustainable-energy invention is laudable. However, these elements don’t make up for rhymes that often feel forced and a lackluster story.
A disappointing follow-up. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68263-164-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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