Thoroughly entertaining and probably useful.
Throughout the large, sturdy, die-cut pages, a little girl talks about her fears and how she copes with them.
Following In My Heart (2015), Witek and Roussey have again produced text and art that deal with children’s emotions without sentiment, condescension, or oversimplification—and with humor. The pen-drawn girl gazes at a greenish mound that spills over the gutter to where she stands on the verso as she confesses, “When I was little, I was afraid of everything! Little creaks and squeaks and booming thunderclaps. Teeny creepy-crawlies and monstrous, pointy fangs. I had a pile of fears as big as a mountain.” The next double-page spread, sporting a comical, blue-furred, monster-ish being, describes the icy feeling that often accompanies fear; its yawning mouth is a circular cutout that leads to the next spread. On it, the girl mentions fear of the dark, this time also explaining what helps her: “a bright night-light and my superpowered pajamas, which are 100 percent danger-proof.” On each successive double-page spread, the girl describes one fear and then explains her coping mechanism, always aided by enormously amusing art, plus the bonus of punched-out holes. There’s even a child-friendly version of the imagine-your-audience-nude advice sometimes given to timorous adults, as the girl imagines her angry teacher as an owl: “Imagining her feathers makes me feel brave.” The book also affirms the fact that sometimes it’s fun to scare and be scared, as at Halloween.
Thoroughly entertaining and probably useful. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1923-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Abrams Appleseed
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated.
Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault’s classic alphabet book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989) gets the Halloween treatment.
Chung follows the original formula to the letter. In alphabetical order, each letter climbs to the top of a tree. They are knocked back to the ground in a jumble before climbing up in sequence again. In homage to the spooky holiday theme, they scale a “creaky old tree,” and a ghostly jump scare causes the pileup. The chunky, colorful art is instantly recognizable. The charmingly costumed letters (“H swings a tail. / I wears a patch. J and K don / bows that don’t match”) are set against a dark backdrop, framed by pages with orange or purple borders. The spreads feature spiderwebs and jack-o’-lanterns. The familiar rhyme cadence is marred by the occasional clunky or awkward phrase; in particular, the adapted refrain of “Chicka chicka tricka treat” offers tongue-twisting fun, but it’s repeatedly followed by the disappointing half-rhyme “Everybody sneaka sneak.” Even this odd construction feels shoehorned into place, since “sneaking” makes little sense when every character in the book is climbing together. The final line of the book ends on a more satisfying note, with “Everybody—time to eat!”
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781665954785
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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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
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