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BETWEEN TWO WINDOWS

Name: BETWEEN TWO WINDOWS
Author: Keisha Morris
ISBN: 9780063235106

by Keisha Morris ; illustrated by Keisha Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2024

Honors the joy and simplicity of childhood.

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Two neighborhood children become friends through their art.

Kayla and Mateo live in buildings across from each other; they often look out at each other through their windows. They create drawings and then exchange them using a creaky old retractable clothesline that runs between their two buildings. Their art depicts everyday items such as the foods their loved ones prepare for them, as well as grand stories drawn from their imaginations. The two embark on fantastical imagined journeys together and even invent new dinosaur species, such as the Pastelito-saurus, inspired by the pastelitos made by Mateo’s mami. When the clothesline is unexpectedly taken down to be repaired, Kayla, Mateo, and their neighbors turn the surrounding sidewalks, playgrounds, and building walls into a shared canvas of expression. Sparse yet satisfying text and dialogue, including playful use of onomatopoeia, complement the captivating digital illustrations, created from collaged tissue paper and Photoshop. The bright and colorful illustrations are the star of this work. Images of Kayla and Mateo immersed in their loose-lined doodles of their imagined worlds are a delight; readers will enjoy examining the spreads and finding new details on every page. Kayla presents Black, while Mateo, who is brown-skinned, is cued as Latine; a reference to piraguas, a Puerto Rican dessert, suggests that Kayla might be Afro-Latine.

Honors the joy and simplicity of childhood. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024

ISBN: 9780063235106

Page Count: 48

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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SPAGHETTI HEAD & CHICKEN FINGERS

by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal ; illustrated by Erica Salcedo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2026

Wild and wacky.

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A picture book from the comedy duo known as Rhett & Link, creators of the online juggernaut Good Mythical Morning.

Lumo is obsessed with chicken fingers; Saffy, who is new to town and anxious about starting school, finds comfort in the only food she likes: buttered spaghetti. The night before the first day of school, a thunderstorm rages, and each kid makes a wish—“to have chicken fingers at school,” in Lumo’s case; Saffy wishes for “the first thing off the top of her head: buttered spaghetti.” File under “Be careful what you wish for.” Lumo’s and Saffy’s respective physical changes (chicken fingers for fingers, spaghetti for hair) make navigating school a challenge but bring them together in the cafeteria, where they enjoy some new foods—and their new friendship. The plotting could have been sharper: Why do the kids’ bodies suddenly return to normal? And couldn’t the authors have thought up a less old-hat story-ending punch line? Nevertheless, McLaughlin and Neal get by on their charm, and the plot sets up some funny visuals. Salcedo’s cartoony Photoshop art features well-chosen artifacts from a typical kid’s life and captures the mortification of not fitting in, which will be familiar even to readers who have never experienced breaded fingers or noodle hair. Lumo is brown-skinned and dark-haired; Saffy is pale-skinned with disheveled reddish-brown hair.

Wild and wacky. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: June 16, 2026

ISBN: 9780063474154

Page Count: 32

Publisher: HarperPop/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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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)