This family tale’s inviting themes and images make it shine.
Three babies and their mothers struggle with car-ride grumpiness in this picture book.
When a baby starts to cry in the back seat, Mommy pulls over to figure out what’s going on. But after checking the diaper, the mirror, and the bottle, Mommy’s out of ideas. Back on the road, Mommy finally decides to try a lullaby: “So she sang sang sang / and to her relief relief relief,” baby soon falls asleep. Dee’s simple text features repeating words in every phrase, but many of them don’t have the same number of consonants, which makes the scansion feel off and the pattern of emphasis difficult to figure out. Still, the list of things to check when a baby is in tears is likely to be familiar to small lap readers and helpful to new parents in figuring out what their steps should be in a similar situation. While the focused story is thematically well done, the real highlight is the images. Dee and Seydjoo’s illustrations offer similar backgrounds for each of the three mother-baby pairs in the book. The families are coded as white, Black, and East Asian in heritage, but each mother handles her crying child in the same comforting way, and the love in each case shines through. The emphasis on the mothers’ and babies’ faces, whether crying or calm, is sure to draw and hold the gazes of the youngest lap readers.
This family tale’s inviting themes and images make it shine.Pub Date: March 1, 2024
ISBN: 9781736209356
Page Count: 16
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators.
Existing artwork from an artistic giant inspires a fairy-tale reimagination by a master of the horror genre.
In King’s interpretation of a classic Brothers Grimm story, which accompanies set and costume designs that the late Sendak created for a 1997 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, siblings Hansel and Gretel survive abandonment in the woods and an evil witch’s plot to gobble them up before finding their “happily ever after” alongside their father. Prose with the reassuring cadence of an old-timey tale, paired with Sendak’s instantly recognizable artwork, will lull readers before capitalizing on these creators’ knack for injecting darkness into seemingly safe spaces. Gaping faces loom in crevices of rocks and trees, and a gloomy palette of muted greens and ocher amplify the story’s foreboding tone, while King never sugarcoats the peach-skinned children’s peril. Branches with “clutching fingers” hide “the awful enchanted house” of a “child-stealing witch,” all portrayed in an eclectic mix of spot and full-bleed images. Featuring insults that might strike some as harsh (“idiot,” “fool”), the lengthy, dense text may try young readers’ patience, and the often overwhelmingly ominous mood feels more pitched to adults—particularly those familiar with King and Sendak—but an introduction acknowledges grandparents as a likely audience, and nostalgia may prompt leniency over an occasional disconnect between words and art.
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780062644695
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
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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