A tale of father-child bonding full of visual appeal but unfocused in its storytelling.
A child narrates their springtime adventures against the backdrop of a field of old junk across from their school.
It’s easy to get into the head of the child protagonist, as the stream-of-consciousness narration is so perfectly childlike. At the end of a school day during which a girl brags about finding a two-headed frog, the child’s father meets them and walks them home in the rain across the field, talking about clouds and listening to frogs until it’s time to part ways. The child visits the field on their own, exploring the junk that lies about and remembering how they once screamed their anger and fear over their father’s moving out into the old echo-y silo. The spring rains flood the field, forming an ephemeral pond where the child-dad duo catch, examine, and release the tadpoles they find. James’ artwork combines acrylic, ink, gouache, cut paper, and photos. Readers will almost be able to feel the bumps and ridges in the thickly textured illustrations. While the close bond between father and child is quite evident, what’s unclear is what readers should take from this tale that jumps from topic to topic. Dad and the child share light skin and black hair; Dad sports a mustache. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A tale of father-child bonding full of visual appeal but unfocused in its storytelling. (notes about frogs and ephemeral ponds, author’s note, further reading) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9780823450053
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2023
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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Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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BOOK REVIEW
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