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REX AND LILLY SCHOOLTIME

Name: REX AND LILLY SCHOOLTIME
Author: Laurie Krasny Brown
ISBN: 0-316-10920-7

by Laurie Krasny Brown & illustrated by Marc Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1997

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Rex And Lilly Schooltime (32 pp.; $12.95; Apr. 1997; 0-316-10920- 7): Three short, funny chapters comprise this easy-to-read book starring dinosaurs Rex and Lilly from dino-experts Brown and Brown (When Dinosaurs Die, 1996, etc.). Rex faces show-and-tell and trading lunches, and Lilly deals with a know-it-all who tries to answer for her while she is laboriously sounding out a word. Using lots of picture clues and a limited vocabulary, the Browns carry newly independent readers along to a surprise twist at the end of each chapter, painlessly expanding their reading skills in the process. (Fiction. 5-7)

Pub Date: April 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-316-10920-7

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
HOW TO BE A FRIEND
by Laurie Krasny Brown & illustrated by Marc Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT'S THE BIG SECRET?
by Laurie Krasny Brown & illustrated by Marc Brown

- BOOK REVIEW
WHEN DINOSAURS DIE
by Laurie Krasny Brown & Marc Brown & illustrated by Marc Brown

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I HATE SCHOOL

by Jeanne Willis & illustrated by Tony Ross ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004

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Never have the horrors of school been more forcefully, or adroitly, expressed. Why does young Honor Brown hate school? “My teacher is a warty toad! / My classroom is a hole! / The cafeteria ladies feed us worms, / and rabbit poo, and coal!” Is it really that bad? Yes, the teachers “throw us out of windows, / And make us walk on glass. / I’ve heard they cut your head off / If you’re talking during class.” All of this receives explicit expression in Ross’s loosely inked scenes as, clad in tartan skirts and floppy hats, or the equivalent uniforms for boys, Honor and her classmates suffer or inflict each torture with uproarious glee or dismay. Of course, when it’s time to graduate, Honor tearfully declares that she’s really going to miss it all. Willis will have readers or listeners rolling in the aisles—and what a refreshing twist on all of those blandly reassuring “First Day of School” stories. (Picture book. 5-7)

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-689-86523-6

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Anne Schwartz/Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

- BOOK REVIEW
THE BEAR WHO HAD NOTHING TO WEAR
by Jeanne Willis ; illustrated by Brian Fitzgerald

- BOOK REVIEW
WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF?
by Jeanne Willis ; illustrated by Isabelle Follath

- BOOK REVIEW
OLD MACDONALD HAD A PHONE
by Jeanne Willis ; illustrated by Tony Ross

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HOME ON THE RANGE

by Brian Ajhar & illustrated by Brian Ajhar ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2004

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Leaving behind a bedroom strewn with elaborately detailed toys, a New York lad clad in a Stetson and pj’s rides his rocking horse out west for some riding and roping “where the skies are not cloudy all day.” Ajhar uses four verses of the 19th-century original’s six (the song has had several versions over the years, none of which are credited here), reprised with a new musical arrangement at the end. His visual interpretation isn’t particularly literal—there are plenty of deer playing, but no antelope, and lines like “Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free / The breezes so balmy and light” sound odd coming from the preschool-aged protagonist. But the cattle have mobile, expressive countenances, and even children already home on the range will respond to the ditty’s eminently singable sentiment. (Picture book. 5-7)