A well-intentioned resource burdened by textual and visual repetition.
DeBroeck’s picture book emphasizes the importance of inner qualities.
The author narrates in the second person, explaining directly to the reader the notion of having all of one’s specialness and individual characteristics locked away in a box that other people can see inside. DeBroeck’s message—whatever others say, one ultimately controls the contents of one’s own box—is good and important, and is delivered twice: once in language suitable for children, and once for teenagers. The prose, however, is unwieldy (as is the font), sacrificing simplicity in search of end rhymes. For example: “The things that people say to hurt you are written all on red. / They will try to stick their lies in your box but they fall off instead.” Or: “Don’t worry about hiding your embarrassing moments, there’s no need to feel that compelled. / People are too busy thinking about themselves. / You should feel proud of learning from your mistakes like an award on your shelves.” Rohla’s digital illustrations add little to the reading experience, depicting the reader (“you”) as a simple avatar with little range of either motion or facial expression (though the characters do at least evince racial diversity). The backdrops are sparse to the point of being drab. After the first few pages, readers will likely have grasped the gist and be ready to move on.
A well-intentioned resource burdened by textual and visual repetition.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2021
ISBN: 9798710810095
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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