An original, engaging tale that emphasizes creativity and bravery.
A girl enables her village to count again in this picture book.
A village’s people “counted to five as much as they could.” For example, they say, “One-two-three-four-five little ducks swimming in the pond!” One night, “the Evil, Mean, Mad Magician,” a White man, steals the three from “the hall where the numbers were kept.” The diverse townspeople panic, counting “One-two-four-five.” A “wise old lady” asks them to close their eyes and raise their hands. She instructs: “If you are not the strongest person in the land…put your hand down.” After she asks, “Are you the smartest?,” the only person left is a medium-brown-skinned girl. The villagers elect her to retrieve the three. Following a challenging journey, she spies the thief burying the stolen number. When it sprouts into a tree, he says, “those silly townspeople will never, ever be able to count to five again.” Devastated, the girl notices “tiny little threes” between the branches and brings one home. The townspeople rejoice when she plants it and it grows into a tree sprouting “3” shapes. She instructs everyone to plant “threes…across the land” so “the…Magician will never be able to steal them.” The enjoyable story features a quirky mix of fantasy and adventure. Farkas’ language (“skulked and snuck and crawled”) is lively. The instances of resourcefulness and strength will appeal to young readers. Mangal’s simple illustrations include old-fashioned and medieval-esque details. The depictions of numbers add helpful visual context.
An original, engaging tale that emphasizes creativity and bravery.Pub Date: May 11, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-52-559157-0
Page Count: 28
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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