A winner on many levels.
After a courageous young girl befriends a legendary creature, she must stop the frightened villagers from attacking it.
With ivory hair and pale white skin, Erin Pike lives in a quaint seaside town with her spotted hound, Archie, and her fisherwoman mother. The people of her town all tell tales of the horrible monster Black Rock, a fearsome and gigantic nautical creature capable of moving throughout the seas and tearing boats to pieces. Undaunted by the whispers, Erin stows away on her mother’s boat to find the monster. She discovers, however, that Black Rock is a gentle being who follows the plethora of beautiful aquatic life that inhabits the sea. When the townsfolk decide to attack Black Rock, will one small girl be able to stop them? Todd-Stanton’s tale is, at first glance, a deceptively simple tale of acceptance and bravery. However, he deftly infuses his narrative with quiet depth, including a positive ecological slant in which nature wins over machines, and portrays Erin’s single mother succeeding in a typically male-dominated profession. The illustrations are dazzling and vibrantly hued, the rich palette just right for the resplendent undersea scenes that adroitly float young readers’ sense of magic just under the surface of the mundane.
A winner on many levels. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-911171-25-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Flying Eye Books
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Sure to have little ones giggling.
Jacques is a hedgehog with a big secret: “I wear real, bona fide underwear.”
Our narrator received a mysterious package one day; an illustration shows a pair of underwear tied to a balloon with a note “from the Universe” floating down into Jacques’ burrow. Hedgehogs don’t wear underwear, however. Will Jacques be shunned? Jacques worries but comes to a decision: “I have to wear them. When I do I feel special.” Determined, Jacques, who’s been invited to a party, makes a dramatic entrance, with undies in hand. Jacques’ declaration (“I WEAR UNDERWEAR”) is met with remarks of dismay, before another hedgehog opens up about similar fears and shows off a pair of cowboy boots. More hedgehogs introduce themselves with their own confessions. The story ends with Jacques unveiling a painting of the underwear in a gallery filled with hedgehogs wearing all sorts of attire. Though the book is simple in plot, characters, and setting, it wins in its balance of bathroom humor, dramatic storytelling, and celebrations of individual expression. French words are peppered throughout, adding to the fun without detracting from the story for those unfamiliar with the language. The cartoonish illustrations brim with fun; Valdez relies heavily on geometric shapes (triangle noses for the hedgehogs; huge circles for their eyes). Details such as speech bubbles and recurring turtle and snake characters contribute to the outlandish humor.
Sure to have little ones giggling. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781250814388
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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