Sweet, fun, and a little flawed.
In Kane and Davis’ (The New Friend, 2016) second collaboration, play-date queen Ginger Green invites an unconventional friend over, and she has regrets immediately.
Seven-year-old fox Ginger takes great pride in her play-date setups, and she is excited for the next one with classmate Maisy. Almost immediately, though, Ginger is on the back foot as Maisy gets up to some unexpected antics: overexcited doorbell-ringing, enthusiastic nudity, and reckless roof-climbing chief among them. Ginger (not to mention her mother) is flummoxed at first but soon becomes angry—not the best mood for a play date. After Maisy returns to the ground and both have had some soothing lemonade, the girls do a few handstands and flips, and Ginger remembers that she loves her friend precisely because she always does the unexpected. Adding a dash of drama and danger to the social dilemma of playing hostess the series explores, this chapter book navigates the complex maze of developing friendships and the negotiation of compatibility. Uncluttered, grayscale illustrations provide cues without becoming distracting for new readers. That said, readers turned off by discriminatory terms such as “crazy” (used sparingly but significantly here) or notions that difference is linked to danger may want to try a different installment of the series.
Sweet, fun, and a little flawed. (Chapter book. 6-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5158-1953-0
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Picture Window Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
An accessible early reader for the holiday shelf.
A Thanksgiving-themed text for new readers features illustrations of a grateful child in a multiracial family.
The unnamed narrator, a child of color with brown skin and wavy, dark hair, awakens and is thankful there’s no school that day. The narrator’s happy to pitch in when Pops, an elder who uses a cane and has gray hair and lighter skin, asks for help in the kitchen. They join the child’s mother in making pies, and then they visit the child’s father at his job as a firefighter (the former has lighter skin like Pops’, the latter shares the narrator’s coloring). Throughout, the child gives thanks—expressing gratitude “that Pops lives with us” and “for what my dad and his crew do to keep us safe.” After participating in the town’s turkey-trot road race, they return home to greet diverse extended family (cousins, aunts, uncles, and Great-Gran), who join them for a shared meal, watching football on TV, and, once the weather clears up, playing football outside. With its consistent affirmations and digital art that visually echoes the text, the book is rooted in the “positive power” its series title extols. This doesn’t lead to action-packed storytelling but could spark conversations about gratitude and Thanksgiving, depicted as a modern family celebration without any reference to its history in Colonial America. Series companion I Am Kind publishes simultaneously.
An accessible early reader for the holiday shelf. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62336-920-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Rodale Kids
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it.
A guide to better behavior—at home, on the playground, in class, and in the library.
Serving as a sort of overview for the series’ 12 previous exercises in behavior modeling, this latest outing opens with a set of badly behaving dinos, identified in an endpaper key and also inconspicuously in situ. Per series formula, these are paired to leading questions like “Does she spit out her broccoli onto the floor? / Does he shout ‘I hate meat loaf!’ while slamming the door?” (Choruses of “NO!” from young audiences are welcome.) Midway through, the tone changes (“No, dinosaurs don’t”), and good examples follow to the tune of positive declarative sentences: “They wipe up the tables and vacuum the floors. / They share all the books and they never slam doors,” etc. Teague’s customary, humongous prehistoric crew, all depicted in exact detail and with wildly flashy coloration, fill both their spreads and their human-scale scenes as their human parents—no same-sex couples but some are racially mixed, and in one the man’s the cook—join a similarly diverse set of sibs and other children in either disapprobation or approving smiles. All in all, it’s a well-tested mix of oblique and prescriptive approaches to proper behavior as well as a lighthearted way to play up the use of “please,” “thank you,” and even “I’ll help when you’re hurt.”
Formulaic but not stale…even if it does mine previous topical material rather than expand it. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-36334-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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