A home run for kids and adults alike.
The Hometown All Stars are at it again in this colorful, educational children’s book.
Nick, Kareem, Flo, and the whole gang always look forward to “T-Day” on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when they all play T-ball after school. The kids, full of excitement, manage to make their ways through the school day, take the bus home, complete their homework, and finally get onto the field to start T-ball practice. Before they can all be great ballplayers like Hall of Famer Cy Young (on whom the kids receive a brief history lesson), they must learn the basics, including how to throw the ball. Coach sets the whole team up on the field and outlines the T formation in which every baseball player learns how to throw. They practice on a target featuring a picture of Coach’s face. He tells the kids that throwing should make one’s body look like a windmill and that one should avoid “spaghetti arms.” By the end of practice, the Hometown All Stars have a better understanding of one of the most important fundamentals of the game, and they had a lot of fun learning it. Christofora (Magic Bat Day, 2015, etc.), a T-ball coach himself, is clearly passionate about the game. The children’s excitement is palpable before their practice, and so is the author’s; he really understands not only the game of baseball, but also how to teach the basics of a complicated game to children. Young readers could use this work as an instruction manual to learn proper throwing techniques. The historic bits are a wonderful touch that will teach children about some of the game’s most important players. A friendly, anthropomorphic baseball also offers advice and trivia, including notes on Cooperstown, New York, the site of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and suggestions on how to properly hold a baseball. Tangeman’s vibrant illustrations are also lovely and really help demonstrate the techniques that Christofora highlights. Whether a child is just dipping his or her toe into the baseball pool or is already a full-blown fan, the Hometown All Stars series, including this newest volume, is sure to delight.
A home run for kids and adults alike.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Clarens Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
