A beautifully illustrated celebration of human differences.
In Nestor’s picture book, a young girl learns to accept her differences and to celebrate her uniqueness.
One morning, Jane, who has tan skin and curly brown hair, wakes, eats breakfast, puts on her glasses, and grabs her bag. However, just as she leaves for school, she becomes nervous and stalls. At school, shy Jane feels unaccepted by her peers and holds back her questions. Her mother then comforts her, encouraging her to celebrate what makes her unique (“what makes you different makes you beautiful”), but on the bus, a miserable boy named Eric forces her to move away from the group. In that moment, Jane launches into a daydream about the Jungle of Individuality. After a visit to the jungle and a swim in the Waterfall of Strength, Jane accepts her uniqueness. In this heartwarming book, Nestor effectively conveys what it’s like to feel different. The stunning illustrations by Mikki use a warm color palette to beautifully show emotion and establish a sense of place. The images are particularly apt at depicting the genuine warmth and acceptance Jane experiences at home—the cat and Jane’s mother mirror each other’s pained expressions when Jane begs to stay. The text’s ideas are rich, and the observation that much mean behavior is rooted in other people’s issues is insightful; however, readers may wish that the Jungle of Individuality was a more nuanced conceit less focused on alliteration and assonance.
A beautifully illustrated celebration of human differences.Pub Date: July 29, 2024
ISBN: 9798350953602
Page Count: 40
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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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