A lightly wacky take on a valuable message.
A small child welcomes some unexpected visitors to Earth.
Tatulli’s second picture book (Daydreaming, 2016) opens upon the star-studded, black expanse of space as a small craft makes its way to Earth. The ship lands in a swirl of mystery, and throngs of people crowd around it, wondering “why did they come? What do they want? Why are they here?” And within moments, panic ensues. A police captain yells that they must be here to steal things; a news reporter insists that they came to take over TV shows in a grab for fame; and a military general warns that they came with the simple goal of taking the entire planet. Tatulli has an eye for visual perspective designed to heighten narrative tension as the lively illustrations capture the crowd’s rising frenzy of terror and intense protective measures. All of it comes to a striking standstill when Stephen Sprout, a small child known for his trepidation, calmly calls for order and gives his own sweet explanation for the aliens’ visit. The somewhat message-driven (though animatedly so) reminder of the potential harm and isolation that fear can drive us to is certainly timely, and a youthful voice of reason never goes out of style, even if Tatulli breaks little new ground. His humans are racially diverse; Stephen has light brown skin, brown hair, and blue eyes.
A lightly wacky take on a valuable message. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62672-355-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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 valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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