This just may encourage young readers to look up to the night sky and gain a new friend of their own.
Readers are brought along on a young girl’s imaginative nighttime adventure around the world.
The moon is both a source of wonder for the girl and a companion that is always there. In the first-person narration, the girl addresses the moon directly: “Hey there, Moon. There you are again. / I wonder, why do you follow me?” Subtly, the author addresses some of the questions and observations kids make about this celestial body. “Each night you seem a little different from the night before. / But I always know it’s you.” These queries are answered in the backmatter, which further explains each topic the girl wonders about, describes and maps the places she visits on her adventure, describes the phases of the moon and gives further facts, and provides activities that can help children understand why the moon appears to change. Gorgeous silhouettes against a deep blue, star-spangled sky follow the girl, clad in boots and a dress and sporting a pageboy cut, as she visits the Eiffel Tower, the Trans-Siberian Railway, the Serengeti, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, Sequoia National Park, the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon, and the Arctic and Antarctic. Appropriately, the moon changes phase as the pages turn (the new moon is not represented), though it always appears as it would from the Northern Hemisphere.
This just may encourage young readers to look up to the night sky and gain a new friend of their own. (recommended resources) (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58469-572-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dawn Publications
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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