A timely celebration of individual difference.
Walter feels out of place among the other sharks at school.
Walter’s been looking forward to school all summer, but a class photo has him in a panic: Everyone’s teeth are huge. How can Walter, with his “teeny tiny teeth,” make friends with the likes of Manny Mako and Greta Great White? The whale shark spends the morning worrying, but an idea strikes him at lunchtime. He scoops up some matching seashells to enhance his smile, but after one bite of his sandwich, they all come tumbling out. “Oh Mackerel!” His seaweed teeth are similarly unsuccessful, and his shrimp teeth flee (“SWIM for it!”) as soon as Walter opens his mouth to read aloud. Dejected, Walter heads home, where his mother waits with some reassurance: Walter doesn’t need teeth like the other sharks’ because whale sharks eat different food. (This important scientific fact is only hinted at in the plankton-and–chocolate chip cookies she serves Walter as an after-school snack.) “Having teeny tiny teeth doesn’t mean you don’t fit in. It’s what makes you special.” Quintanilla’s illustrations play up the other sharks’ big, pointy teeth (one precocious “sharky-gartener” even sports braces) and Walter’s roller coaster of excitement and disappointment/embarrassment. The other sharks laugh, seemingly at Walter’s expense. The variably weighted, sans-serif typeface may make it hard for new readers to parse some letters.
A timely celebration of individual difference. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4867-1809-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flowerpot Press
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
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
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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