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IGNORE THE TROLLS

Name: IGNORE THE TROLLS
Author: Jordan Gershowitz
ISBN: 978-1-57687-933-7

by Jordan Gershowitz ; illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 2019

Gets to the titular point but lacks contemporary advice.

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Modern advice in a medieval setting plays on parallels between trolls, real and online.

Tim the Timid (as he’s known) has a good heart, but he yearns to be more than a boy afraid to dance with fairies. At school the bravest kids are the Knights, so that’s where he’s set his sights. Unfortunately, when tryouts are announced, Tim starts practicing only to find his embarrassing mistakes are captured by a troll’s “magic picture taker” and sent to all the kids in school. The more Tim tries to prove himself to the trolls, the worse they treat him, until he finally heeds advice from the knight Bethany the Brave that the only way to defeat them is to ignore them. Tim draws courage from her counsel, though it is unclear how this solves his initial problems of timidity, which were entirely unrelated to trolls. Regardless, his newfound strength leads him to victory. While many might benefit from the advice to ignore online bullying, it’s unfortunate that the book lacks any backmatter that might provide kids advice from an era a little more recent than the Middle Ages. Busy pages teem with images that meld the past and the present, often serving the story but sometimes overwhelming the eye. Tim presents white; Bethany has dark skin.

Gets to the titular point but lacks contemporary advice. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-57687-933-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: POW!

Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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RUBY FINDS A WORRY

From the Big Bright Feelings series

by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019

A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...

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Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.

Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.

A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)