A realistic look at a strong family facing cancer. “Hair has always been important to us Carters,” says Marcus, and each family member has a specific hairstyle for annual picture day. Mama usually “loops and gathers her braids together like a beautiful black crown.” But this year, things are different: Mama has cancer, and treatment has taken her hair away. Marcus offers her costume wigs in a store, but she declines. Conflating the hair loss (and Mama’s plan to skip picture day) with the unbearable possibility of Mama dying, Marcus takes action. At the barber shop, he gets all his hair shaved, planning to take it home for Mama to use. When the barber inadvertently discards it, Marcus breaks down sobbing, but his rock-steady parents are there. Mama agrees to pictures while wearing a gele (headwrap), and her future—while not certain—looks hopeful. Regrettably, the specific hairstyles—Marcus’s fade and his sister’s braids and beads, for example—are visually indistinct. However, Bates’s tender watercolor-and-pencil illustrations are warm in color and feeling, matching the depth of emotions perfectly. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8037-2955-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Give this child’s-eye view of a day at the beach with an attentive father high marks for coziness: “When your ball blows across the sand and into the ocean and starts to drift away, your daddy could say, Didn’t I tell you not to play too close to the waves? But he doesn’t. He wades out into the cold water. And he brings your ball back to the beach and plays roll and catch with you.” Alley depicts a moppet and her relaxed-looking dad (to all appearances a single parent) in informally drawn beach and domestic settings: playing together, snuggling up on the sofa and finally hugging each other goodnight. The third-person voice is a bit distancing, but it makes the togetherness less treacly, and Dad’s mix of love and competence is less insulting, to parents and children both, than Douglas Wood’s What Dads Can’t Do (2000), illus by Doug Cushman. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 23, 2005
ISBN: 0-618-00361-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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