With its generous format and variety, this work should keep kids happily occupied for hours while learning a few things...
This California-themed children’s activity book provides information on the state’s history, animals, and more through coloring pages, stickers, and puzzles.
California is a huge state, matching the big format of this work, with 368 full-size pages packed with information, black-and-white line drawings to color, puzzles to complete, and 253 stickers. (Silhouettes on the appropriate drawings read “PLACE STICKER HERE.”) With some exceptions, the drawing style is cartoonish; both adult and animal figures have exaggerated, childlike features, such as big heads, wide-set eyes, and toothy, open-mouthed grins. Sixteen chapters cover topics including California’s prehistory, European exploration, missions, places of interest, animals, festivals, parks, food, and activities. The opening chapter, “Characters of California,” provides coloring pages (but no additional information) depicting such figures as Maxie Mammoth; Yuki, a Native American; and Soul Deadbones, a sugar-skull man wearing a sombrero. These often correspond to other pages (for example, Soul Deadbones goes with the Día de los Muertos entry), but no cross-references are provided. In the remaining chapters, each page usually includes a headline and a few sentences of explanation, along with a picture to color or a puzzle to solve. Sometimes Drenth (Dogs Don’t, 2017, etc.) makes only a tenuous connection to the state’s history, as when a page on San Francisco’s Chinatown in the Northern California chapter is followed by a maze titled “Help the ninja find the path to his lunch.” What do ninjas, whether the original Japanese feudal mercenaries or the pop-culture variety, have to do with the Bay Area? Similarly, the illustrations by Cardona (Puerto Rico Coloring Learning Activity Book, 2013, etc.) sometimes lack accuracy; Yuki, for example, wears deerskin leggings, although Yuki men wore only an apron-like piece of deerskin. But children, less picky about such matters, can enjoy the assortment of activities the book offers, the bite-sized factoids, and perhaps especially the colorful stickers, which are vivid, lively, and fun.
With its generous format and variety, this work should keep kids happily occupied for hours while learning a few things about California.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-880760-70-3
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Sunnyscene LLC
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.
In Florence’s middle-grade fantasy novel, a young girl’s heart is tested in the face of an evil, spreading Darkness.
Eleven-year-old Lydia, “freckle-cheeked and round-eyed, with hair the color of pine bark and fair skin,” is struggling with the knowledge that she has reached the age to apprentice as an herbalist. Lydia is reluctant to leave her beloved, magical Mulberry Glen and her cozy Housetree in the woods—she’ll miss Garder, the Glen’s respected philosopher; her fairy guardian Pit; her human friend Livy; and even the mischievous part-elf, part-imp, part-human twins Zale and Zamilla. But the twins go missing after hearing of a soul-sapping Darkness that has swallowed a forest and is creeping into minds and engulfing entire towns. They have secretly left to find a rare fruit that, it is said, will stop the Darkness if thrown into the heart of the mountain that rises out of the lethal forest. Lydia follows, determined to find the twins before they, too, fall victim to the Darkness. During her journey, accompanied by new friends, she gradually realizes that she herself has a dangerous role to play in the quest to stop the Darkness. In this well-crafted fantasy, Florence skillfully equates the physical manifestation of Darkness with the feelings of insecurity and powerlessness that Lydia first struggles with when thinking of leaving the Glen. Such negative thoughts grow more intrusive the closer she and her friends come to the Darkness—and to Lydia’s ultimate, powerfully rendered test of character, which leads to a satisfyingly realistic, not quite happily-ever-after ending. Highlights include a delightfully haunting, reality-shifting library and a deft sprinkling of Latin throughout the text; Pit’s pet name for Lydia is mea flosculus (“my little flower”). Fine-lined ink drawings introducing each chapter add a pleasing visual element to this well-grounded fairy tale.
An absorbing fantasy centered on a resilient female protagonist facing growth, change, and self-empowerment.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781956393095
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Waxwing Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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