Stella’s Brave Voice may empower other kids to find theirs, too.
A young girl must learn to advocate for herself in Bader’s picture book.
Stella and her fraternal twin sister, Paige, have lots in common. They also have complementary differences: Stella likes cake but not frosting, for example, while Paige likes frosting but not cake. But Stella gets aggravated when Paige speaks for her without giving her time to answer, or interrupts, or speaks over her. Stella wants to speak up, but she doesn’t know how. That evening, their mother gives Stella great advice, reminding her how Paige started to speak up for Stella when they were younger and Stella’s anxiety was more severe. Her advice empowers Stella to speak up for herself, but also to remember that Paige loves her and doesn’t want her to feel scared. Their mother helps Stella use her stuffed animals to model a conversation with Paige. The next day at school, Stella has a productive conversation with her sibling. Bader’s story presents anxious young readers with a great model for learning how to assert themselves in conversation. Soto’s full-color cartoon illustrations are cute but might have been improved with more realistic shading, although the well-drawn backgrounds ably contextualize the settings. The speaking characters are all depicted with pale skin; the story has several background characters of color, including the twins’ teacher.
Stella’s Brave Voice may empower other kids to find theirs, too.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2023
ISBN: 9798985768138
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note.
Little Honey Bunny Funnybunny loves baseball almost as much as she loves her big brother P.J.—though it’s a close-run thing.
Readers familiar with the pranks P.J. plays on his younger sibling in older episodes of the series (most illustrated by Roger Bollen) will be amused—and perhaps a little confused—to see him in the role of perfect big brother after meeting his swaddled little sister for the first time in mama’s lap. But here, along with being a constant companion and “always happy to see her,” he cements his heroic status in her eyes by hitting a home run for his baseball team and then patiently teaching her how to play T-ball. After carefully coaching her and leading her through warm-up exercises, he even sits in the stands, loudly cheering her on as she scores the winning run in her own very first game. “‘You are the best brother a bunny could ever have!’” she burbles. This tale’s a tad blander compared with others centered on P.J. and his sister, but it’s undeniably cheery, with text well structured for burgeoning readers. The all-smiles animal cast in Bowers’ cartoon art features a large and diversely hued family of bunnies sporting immense floppy ears as well as a multispecies crowd of furry onlookers equally varied of color, with one spectator in a wheelchair.
A tale of mutual adoration that hits a sweet note. (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9798217032464
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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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