Not all questions can be answered, but the communion of friendship lights much of life’s path.
A patient bear deftly answers most of a childlike rabbit’s many “whys.”
As the two friends perch with a telescope beneath a starry sky, the rabbit’s “Why?” garners a contextual answer: “Because they are very far away.” When the bear guzzles honey from three large jars, the inevitable query is met with “Because it tastes so good.” The turn of the page reveals a reclining, lethargic bear. “Why?” “Because I ate too much.” Seeger’s patterned text invites readers to tease out what the friends’ spare conversation leaves unsaid, scanning for clues among the pictures. Comic moments derive from the bear’s succinct responses: The rabbit, buffeted while hanging from a branch (“Wind…”), falls into the bear’s arms (“Gravity”). Seeger’s watercolors capture seasonal changes as nature’s greens yield to falling leaves and flurrying snow. When the rabbit contemplates a dead cardinal, vivid red against the snow, the bear, eyes conveying emotion, says, “I don’t know why. Sometimes I just don’t know why!” As the bear moves toward a beckoning cave, the rabbit begs the bear to stay—and it’s the bear’s turn to ask “Why?” A final scene shows the slumbering bear, the rabbit gazing from above, as snow falls. There are poignant echoes of Margaret Wise Brown’s The Dead Bird and Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman here.
Not all questions can be answered, but the communion of friendship lights much of life’s path. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4173-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict the laughter that will emanate from this world of tomorrow.
The future is now…and it’s exceedingly silly.
“This book is from the future.” What are things like there? Barnett enlightens readers: “The sun is called the moon and the moon is called the sun.” Readers learn that apples no longer exist (Barnett doesn’t explain why), that lots of people are named “Charlie Cheese Face” (“There’s an interesting reason why, but we don’t have time for that story”), and that instead of “goodbye,” people now say, “You smell like a baby!” The work closes with a ridiculous conversation between two characters who somehow manage to work in most of the new terms. This tale’s raison d’être seems to be coming up with the goofiest alternatives to normal day-to-day terms and interactions. Barnett gets seriously silly as he thinks up gags ideal for reading aloud at storytime. As for Harris’ art, aside from the occasional cool pair of sunglasses or hair dye, the future feels pretty early-21st-century; his colorful ink and gouache illustrations are rife with visual gags. Futuristic terms look as if they were printed on a label maker. Human characters vary in skin tone.
It doesn’t take a fortune teller to predict the laughter that will emanate from this world of tomorrow. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9798217033171
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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