In an endearing tale of socks lost and found, Pippin’s lost sock makes him very angry; none but the matching yellow sock with clocks on it will do. So, he and his pal Tog set out to find the stray. Along the way, the two ponder all the sad, lost socks there are in the world: “All the odd socks. Socks with holes in the toes. Socks that nobody wants to know.” The duo teams up to find as many of these sad socks as they can, and ends up with a huge pile culled from under cushions, inside washing machines and stuffed in shoes. With the help of a four-page foldout laundry line they find matches for ones with stripes, ones with polka dots, short ones and long ones, but none that are yellow with clocks. When the pals decide that the only thing to do is to wear odd socks, Tog finds he already is—and guess what one of them looks like! Rescek’s brightly hued illustrations are a delight—Pippin and Tog are adorably fuzzy and just as colorful as their socks. Young readers will marvel at the sheer number of different patterns on the socks and enjoy matching them. A great tale of determination and creative problem-solving. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-439-74831-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chicken House/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
It doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict the laughter that will emanate from this world of tomorrow.
The future is now…and it’s exceedingly silly.
“This book is from the future.” What are things like there? Barnett enlightens readers: “The sun is called the moon and the moon is called the sun.” Readers learn that apples no longer exist (Barnett doesn’t explain why), that lots of people are named “Charlie Cheese Face” (“There’s an interesting reason why, but we don’t have time for that story”), and that instead of “goodbye,” people now say, “You smell like a baby!” The work closes with a ridiculous conversation between two characters who somehow manage to work in most of the new terms. This tale’s raison d’être seems to be coming up with the goofiest alternatives to normal day-to-day terms and interactions. Barnett gets seriously silly as he thinks up gags ideal for reading aloud at storytime. As for Harris’ art, aside from the occasional cool pair of sunglasses or hair dye, the future feels pretty early-21st-century; his colorful ink and gouache illustrations are rife with visual gags. Futuristic terms look as if they were printed on a label maker. Human characters vary in skin tone.
It doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict the laughter that will emanate from this world of tomorrow. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798217033171
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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