A treat of a birthday picture book.
Bringing his friend a birthday surprise isn’t exactly a piece of cake for Mouse.
Mouse bakes a delicious birthday cake for his friend, Little Bird, but as he takes the walk to deliver it to Little Bird’s house, various animals along the way entice him to share pieces with them. In return, they offer him miscellaneous tokens of thanks. He feels bad when he arrives at Little Bird’s house with a cork from Chicken, a wire from Squirrel, a butterfly net from Bear and a flyswatter from Cow, but Little Bird has a big plan. It turns out each animal who was eager to swap something for cake needs something that another animal traded. By fulfilling these needs, Little Bird and Mouse obtain ingredients to make a new cake—milk from Cow, honey from Bear, nuts from Squirrel and eggs from Chicken. The fun comes with the surprising solutions that Little Bird and Mouse offer: They don’t give Bear a flyswatter to shoo away the bees swarming near the honey he’s collected, for example; they give him the cork to plug up the hive. (Here’s hoping Bear removes it when he leaves, or that’s the last honey he’ll be collecting.) Digitally colored pencil illustrations lack the sketchy, expressive charm of Pham’s Big Sister, Little Sister (2005) and instead adopt a flat, humorous cartoonish quality that’s reminiscent of some of illustrator Peter Brown’s work.
A treat of a birthday picture book. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-199264-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 disappointing follow-up.
Inventor Izzy Gizmo is back in this sequel to her eponymous debut (2017).
While busily inventing one day, Izzy receives an invitation from the Genius Guild to their annual convention. Though Izzy’s “inventions…don’t always work,” Grandpa (apparently her sole caregiver) encourages her to go. The next day they undertake a long journey “over fields, hills, and waves” and “mile after mile” to isolated Technoff Isle. There, Izzy finds she must compete against four other kids to create the most impressive machine. The colorful, detail-rich illustrations chronicle how poor Izzy is thwarted at every turn by Abi von Lavish, a Veruca Salt–esque character who takes all the supplies for herself. But when Abi abandons her project, Izzy salvages the pieces and decides to take Grandpa’s advice to create a machine that “can really be put to good use.” A frustrated Izzy’s impatience with a friend almost foils her chance at the prize, but all’s well that ends well. There’s much to like: Brown-skinned inventor girl Izzy is an appealing character, it’s great to see a nurturing brown-skinned male caregiver, the idea of an “Invention Convention” is fun, and a sustainable-energy invention is laudable. However, these elements don’t make up for rhymes that often feel forced and a lackluster story.
A disappointing follow-up. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: March 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-68263-164-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Peachtree
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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