There are so many different kinds of dads in the world that support their kids in so many different ways.
This rhyming board book follows fathers and children through a typical day for a toddler and parent, starting with waking up and continuing until bath-and bedtime. Dads are cheerfully involved in every activity, whether it’s giving their children breakfast, planting a garden together, or going for walks. In every picture, from morning until night, the fathers depicted are delighted by parenthood, and their children are thrilled to spend time with their dads. The watercolor-and-ink illustrations utilize a gentle, pastel palette to depict fathers and children with a variety of skin tones and racial backgrounds. The lilting text reads aloud easily and is simple and predictable enough for even very small children to memorize and read along. “Daddy wakes before I rise. / Drinks his coffee. Rubs his eyes. / Sees me standing on the stair. / Picks me up. Smooths my hair.” Paired, the art and words create a loving, nurturing tone. The book’s only shortcoming is its tendency to place the dads in fairly stereotypically male parenting activities, like teaching children to ride bikes or giving them baths, rather than doing things like cleaning up messes together or changing diapers, tasks which often fall to mothers.
Sweet and affectionate. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-338-35976-3
Page Count: 20
Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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SEEN & HEARD
A wonderfully charming tale of family and sisters that anyone can bond with.
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Two sisters who are constantly at odds take a family road trip that covers more ground—both literally and figuratively—than they expect.
After begging her parents for a sister, Raina gets more than she bargained for once Amara is born. From the moment she was brought home, Amara hasn’t been quite the cuddly playmate that Raina had hoped. As the years pass, the girls bicker constantly and apparently couldn’t be more unalike: Raina spends her time indoors underneath her headphones, and Amara loves animals and the outdoors. The girls, their mother and their little brother all pack up to drive to a family reunion, and it seems like the trip’s just going to be more of the same, with the girls incessantly picking on each other all the way from San Francisco to Colorado. However, when the trip doesn’t go quite as planned—for a number of reasons—the girls manage to find some common ground. Told in then-and-now narratives that are easily discernable in the graphic format, Telgemeier’s tale is laugh-out-loud funny (especially the story about the snake incident) and quietly serious all at once. Her rounded, buoyant art coupled with a masterful capacity for facial expressions complements the writing perfectly. Fans of her previous books Smile (2010) and Drama (2012) shouldn’t miss this one; it’s a winner.
A wonderfully charming tale of family and sisters that anyone can bond with. (Graphic memoir. 7-13)Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-545-54059-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Graphix/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Categories: GENERAL GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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