One wonders what habitats are left for Berkes to tackle; here’s hoping there’s a least one more.
Berkes and Dubin tackle another habitat in their series of variations on “Over in the Meadow,” this time visiting the African savanna.
As in others in the series, each turn of the page/verse of the song introduces a new animal parent and an ever increasing number of babies as the family does something natural within its habitat: the zebras gallop, the giraffes slurp acacia leaves, the elephants squirt water, and the hippos graze. The mother lion teaches her five cubs to stalk, the babies hunkered down against the ground behind a screen of grass, though the prey is neither mentioned nor shown. The family group of chimpanzees swing in the trees “over in the grasslands,” which may be very confusing to young children. The backmatter explains that while most live in the rain forest, some have adapted to living in the savanna. Other animals include hornbills, aardvarks, meerkats, and jackals. All the animals are pictured on a map of the African continent in the backmatter, which also includes a paragraph of information about each, more about the savanna habitat, blurbs about the hidden animal in each spread, the requisite “Fact or Fiction” paragraph, notes from the author and illustrator, and the song lyrics and music. Some brilliant and unusual color choices, along with marvelously textured and patterned papers, make the cut-paper collage illustrations pop.
One wonders what habitats are left for Berkes to tackle; here’s hoping there’s a least one more. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-58469-567-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dawn Publications
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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