This un-pedestrian ode to road safety gets the green light.
Explore the city—safely—with the crosswalk-signal man.
On the corner of Broadway and Main Street lives Mr. Walker, the white crossing signal, who works day and night to help people traverse his street. In Jacques’ sparsely but diversely populated New York City, everyone crosses at the signal, splashes in clean puddles, and enjoys ice cream and leisurely dog walks. One fine day Mr. Walker hangs up his red stop hand and goes for an adventure, freshly adult-sized and complete with a friendly if rudimentary set of facial features. On his staycation, he enjoys all the things he has seen his pedestrians doing: He eats ice cream, chases after a dog, and splashes in pristine puddles under the watchful eye of a White police officer. Spot illustrations of Mr. Walker’s tour of the city depict amusement-park rides, balloons, and a skate park before he admires the sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge in a charming full-page spread. After some fortuitous crosswalk heroics away from home, Mr. Walker returns to his corner and, newly appreciative of his role in the grand scheme, settles back into the signal box quite happily. Author Graff weaves a sweet, imaginative story about the little walk-sign man, and Jacques’ illustrations bring him to life in colorful, chalky illustrations. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This un-pedestrian ode to road safety gets the green light. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-328-85103-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
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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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