A visually awesome celestial exploration.
The question of who owns the moon elicits a range of verse responses.
One night the “curious cat” asks, “Whose moon is that?” This prompts the tree to claim ownership. But the “bird with a song” proclaims, “The tree is wrong,” and asserts possession. In response, the bear lays its claim. Then the mountain contradicts them all saying, “It’s mine”—which the “starry sky” refutes as “a lie.” The wolf growls its rights, pointing out that “It helps me howl.” Appalled, the ocean replies, “None of this is true,” adding, “It does not belong to you!” Finally, the moon responds and sets the record straight. Presented in rhyme, the cadenced text lends itself to reading aloud, enhanced by luminous, moonlit illustrations. Rendered in inky, dark, swirling watercolors punctuated with bursts of pink, lavender, yellow, and green, the night sky provides abstract background. The moon itself appears as a white sphere stippled with black dots and dominates the double-page spreads, illuminating the forest, mountains, and ocean while evoking a sense of timelessness. In contrast, the cat, bird, bear, and wolf, detailed in fine lines, effectively stand out as black-and-white close-ups, grounding viewers.
A visually awesome celestial exploration. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-93227-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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