Playing a wrong note strikes the right chord for a determined little girl in this winning children’s story.
In Bader’s picture book, a new nickname invites a new perspective.
Petunia is a little girl who believes that everything has its proper place and that anything done less than perfectly is unacceptable. (“If there was one thing Petunia knew, it was the importance of being PERFECT.”) Petunia has never heard of a “perfectionist,” but when she overhears her classmate call her one, she looks up the word in the dictionary and proudly shares her new nickname with her mother at home. Petunia isn’t convinced when her mother tells her that there are benefits to making mistakes…until the unthinkable happens and Petunia makes a mistake herself. Encouraged by her teacher and her classmates, this aha moment helps her understand what her mom meant. Bader’s engaging text misses an opportunity: While highlighting the word mistake in red likely represents Petunia’s attitude toward imperfections, it reinforces her aversion when another color would have better supported the book’s theme of mistakes promoting growth. The images of Petunia’s fastidiously organized coloring pencils and books in Beykzadeh’s illustrations highlight her perfectionism and the book’s warm color palette. When other characters are depicted in shadow form, Petunia’s hyperfocus is made distinct. Figuring prominently throughout, the color purple cleverly chimes with the alliterative title.
Playing a wrong note strikes the right chord for a determined little girl in this winning children’s story.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9798985768169
Page Count: 32
Publisher: M. Bader Media
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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
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
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