A warm and inviting introduction to a culturally significant holiday staple and all that it represents.
Siblings learn about the story behind a beloved Vietnamese Lunar New Year dish.
With Tết approaching, two youngsters visit their Bà (Grandmother) for an extra-special sleepover. Tonight, they’ll learn how to make delicious bánh chưng, “chewy, salty, and sweet” celebration cakes. Together they carefully layer mung beans, pork, and rice on top of banana leaves and wrap them up “tight like a great big hug.” To entertain the children as they wait for the cakes to steam all night, Bà tells them the exciting legend of how bánh chưng became a new year tradition: Years ago, an emperor tasked his sons with creating a Tết dish that would best honor their ancestors; Prince Lang Liêu succeeded with his humble but delectable concoction. The children fall asleep, dreaming of the festivities to come. Using gentle, soft hues, Greene beautifully captures a moment of intergenerational connection through food and storytelling—key components of Tết. The illustrations incorporate familiar Vietnamese textures from banana leaves to rice paper wrappers, a subtle cultural nod that adds visual interest. Greene also uses expressive typography throughout, emphasizing the meaning of the words to keep readers engaged. The book provides some much-needed Vietnamese representation to a growing collection of Lunar New Year titles on the market. The family is multiracial: While one of the children’s parents is of Vietnamese heritage, the other presents white.
A warm and inviting introduction to a culturally significant holiday staple and all that it represents. (glossary, bánh chưng recipe, about Tết, author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781250325891
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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