A delectable journey through the imagination—and the palate.
This Filipino import offers a colorful approach to healthy eating.
Nutritionists often encourage people to adopt a rainbow-hued diet in order to ensure they consume a wide array of fruits and vegetables. Two unnamed brown-skinned, dark-haired kids, accompanied by a bug-eyed chameleon, do just that. As the book opens, they’re presented with a basket of various Southeast Asian produce. Each subsequent page is devoted to a single color, with a few matching foods. “Savor GREEN outside as you play!” One youngster and the chameleon stare in wonder, surrounded by a forest of bok choy as the other child runs around amid a field of moringa. Later, the three of them slowly paddle along a yellow river dotted with islands of pineapples and ears of corn: “Yellow can be syrupy like a spoonful of mango, or mild like corn on the cob.” David’s use of figurative language is downright delicious, while Doctor deftly uses different hues of the same color within a single page, with dynamic results; on one page, blots and spills of orange and yellow bleed into each other. Readers will enjoy noticing how the chameleon changes colors with each scene. The trio eventually fall asleep, surrounded by the darker shades of purple yam and plums. An equally vibrant guide to the produce mentioned is included in the backmatter, along with tips for incorporating healthy, environmentally friendly practices into one’s life.
A delectable journey through the imagination—and the palate. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780802856388
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
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
A silly snack guaranteed to satisfy the funny bone; kids will eat it up and ask for more.
In this droll tale, ostensibly straightforward instructions are a recipe for absurdity.
To obtain the two slices of bread that a jelly sandwich calls for, a brown-skinned youngster named Frankie instructs readers to head to the store. But NOT to the bakery aisle! Instead, buy “one orange [traffic] cone, scuba flippers, and a yellow inner tube.” Using those items to fashion a duck disguise, you’ll score the bread from a brown-skinned elder feeding wildfowl in the park. And if the ducks see through your pretense, you might have to practice your “quack-cent.” Similar maneuvers are required to open the jelly jar: You’ll need peanuts, a playground with a “whirly-go-round,” and an elephant with a strong trunk grip. (But if the jar is carelessly opened upside down, you’ll get a “jellyphant.”) To spread the jelly, you must first scrub a dog in your bathtub. (Dip the clean tail in the jelly, then pet and praise the dog until it happily wags its tail over the bread slices.) Putting the slices together requires a knightly tournament, but cutting the sandwich, “the least complicated step of all,” involves training a hamster to ride a unicycle. The final pages propose an alternative (but just as outrageous) method and invite readers to think up their own ridiculous techniques. Burach’s scenarios are inventive and hilarious, while his exaggerated cartoon illustrations reinforce the delicious jokiness each step of the way.
A silly snack guaranteed to satisfy the funny bone; kids will eat it up and ask for more. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 21, 2026
ISBN: 9781338877090
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 9, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2026
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