A sweet treatment of a common theme.
In this French import, a little frog is afraid of nighttime sounds until his parents help him feel safe.
Even though his mother and father help him through his bedtime routine, little Jeremy doesn’t want to go to bed alone in his room after his father reads to him. He hears the titular noises—“scratch scratch scraww plop”—and runs to his parents’ bedroom. The setting of the anthropomorphic frogs’ home has a delightful detail befitting its inhabitants’ amphibious nature: the floors are submerged in a small depth of water. This is apparent in the cover art and in illustrations devoted to interior scenes. The first time Jeremy splashes over to his parents’ room, Dad brings him back to his bed. (As a side note, textual inconsistency refers to the father as both Dad and Daddy and to the mother as both Mama and Mom). This happens twice more, and on the last time Jeremy crawls into his parents’ bed. Now his father can’t sleep, and so he goes outside to sleep on a lily pad. Once there, he too hears the sounds that frightened his son. He brings Jeremy out to the lily pad, and there they discover the neighborly sources of these sounds (a mole, a bird, and a fish) before drifting off to sleep, themselves adrift.
A sweet treatment of a common theme. (Picture book. 2-6)Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59270-179-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original...
A sweetened, condensed version of the best-selling picture book, The Kissing Hand.
As in the original, Chester Raccoon is nervous about attending Owl’s night school (raccoons are nocturnal). His mom kisses him on the paw and reminds him, “With a Kissing Hand… / We’ll never be apart.” The text boils the story down to its key elements, causing this version to feel rushed. Gone is the list of fun things Chester will get to do at school. Fans of the original may be disappointed that this board edition uses a different illustrator. Gibson’s work is equally sentimental, but her renderings are stiff and flat in comparison to the watercolors of Harper and Leak. Very young readers will probably not understand that Owl’s tree, filled with opossums, a squirrel, a chipmunk and others, is supposed to be a school.
Parents of toddlers starting school or day care should seek separation-anxiety remedies elsewhere, and fans of the original shouldn’t look to this version as replacement for their page-worn copies. (Board book. 2-4)Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-933718-77-4
Page Count: 14
Publisher: Tanglewood Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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