Perfectly in tune with the charged emotions involved in navigating friendship and trust.
A young girl can’t help but be angry when she learns her best friend is talking about her behind her back.
As the title suggests, everything hinges on what exactly James said. The pint-sized, artistic narrator heard that James—her best friend—told everyone she thinks she is perfect. But she most certainly does not! She thinks she has big feet and plain hair, and she messes up in math all the time. A misunderstanding is hinted at in the very first pages, where Rosenberg and Myers set up a visual game of “Telephone”: James tells Aiden, who tells Hunter, who tells Katie (and so forth)…. But the girl knows what she heard and retaliates by giving James the silent treatment. All day at school, James tries harder and harder to be her friend, to no avail. Until the art show, when she suddenly realizes that perhaps James said something entirely different. This common childhood struggle is enhanced by the art, which beautifully depicts the girl’s sense of betrayal. With a dripping paintbrush in hand, she throws angry splotches over Myers’ illustrations, adding her own images in wide, watercolor strokes. She and her friend, depicted realistically, are surrounded by taunting stick figures. The little girl is Caucasian with a brown pageboy; the bespectacled little boy is African-American.
Perfectly in tune with the charged emotions involved in navigating friendship and trust. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59643-908-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Neal Porter/Roaring Brook
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
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
BOOK REVIEW
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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