A delicious vision presented in an accessible rhyming format.
Buckley imagines the sweet life to be found in an imaginary Ice Cream Town in this picture book.
Two children (one with peachy skin and pink hair, the other with brown skin and curly brown hair) explore Ice Cream Town, a place where the narrator wants to live (and thinks everyone else should, too). Everything in Ice Cream Town is made of sweets and ice cream—there’s a train, a school, a park, and a lake, all crafted from dessert elements. Each special feature of Ice Cream Town is described in a four-line rhyming stanza in which the first and last lines are the same. Each stanza has a strong rhythm and easy-to-identify rhymes. Repeated action words help reinforce learning: The ice cream train “chugs along on Ice Cream Lane. / It chugs in the sun and the snow and the rain.” Eagan’s pastel illustrations, dominated by hues of pink, suit the candy-land feel of the setting well. Beyond the two main characters, the cast in the background shows a variety of ethnicities and ages, with some disability representation (though the characters largely have the same lean body types). The whimsy and inventiveness of Buckley’s poetry are delightful, particularly in a sequence set in a park that includes ice cream sandwich benches, gumdrop and sundae bushes, and trees made of cones and ice cream bars (among which the children catch fireflies).
A delicious vision presented in an accessible rhyming format.Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780593807767
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre.
Ice princess Lina must navigate family and school in this early chapter read.
The family picnic is today. This is not a typical gathering, since Lina’s maternal relatives are a royal family of Windtamers who have power over the weather and live in castles floating on clouds. Lina herself is mixed race, with black hair and a tan complexion like her Asian-presenting mother’s; her Groundling father appears to be a white human. While making a grand entrance at the castle of her grandfather, the North Wind, she fails to successfully ride a gust of wind and crashes in front of her entire family. This prompts her stern grandfather to ask that Lina move in with him so he can teach her to control her powers. Desperate to avoid this, Lina and her friend Claudia, who is black, get Lina accepted at the Hilltop Science and Arts Academy. Lina’s parents allow her to go as long as she does lessons with grandpa on Saturdays. However, fitting in at a Groundling school is rough, especially when your powers start freak winter storms! With the story unfurling in diary format, bright-pink–highlighted grayscale illustrations help move the plot along. There are slight gaps in the storytelling and the pacing is occasionally uneven, but Lina is full of spunk and promotes self-acceptance.
A jam-packed opener sure to satisfy lovers of the princess genre. (Fantasy. 5-8)Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-338-35393-8
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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