A cute but meaningful picture book delivering a classic message in an original way.
A houseplant learns to embrace her own qualities in Altman’s picture book.
Pothos plant Poe is new to the kitchen shelf and is content to soak in the sun’s rays…until she notices the other plants. Annie the Anthurium has lovely blooms; try as she might, Poe can’t grow her own. Likewise, she copies Rose the rosemary plant by dropping her leaves on a pizza, and Tilly the Tillandsia by trying to live in open air. Poe works her way through imitating every single other plant, but she always fails due to her natural features. Her wake-up call comes when her pot ends up on the floor after she takes a dive straight off the ledge in an attempt to act like the Venus flytrap. Cactus Kenneth tells her, “Root into your own way of being,” and this inspires her to make the most of her existing traits to find a permanent, comfortable place on the shelf. Altman effectively teaches the importance of accepting yourself as you are. Young plant lovers will enjoy the inclusion of phonetic pronunciations of the plants’ species, as well as the different characteristics of each that Poe’s misadventures highlight. Baxter’s illustrations set the story in a bright, 1970s-style kitchen and provide each plant with a visible personality that readers might otherwise miss from the text.
A cute but meaningful picture book delivering a classic message in an original way.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781960492234
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Three Plus One Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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