This celebration of school spirit is sure to get the energy flowing.
This raucous read-along brings school spirit to every moment of the school day.
A diverse group of young students enter the school building, some looking excited, some worried or sad. The book’s text starts up a chant: “We say BOOK, you say BAG… / Book! Bag! Book! Bag!” The narrative continues with chants about familiar school sights, from nametags to the lunch line, “Alpha! Bet!” to class pet. These call-and-response chants alternate with rhyming couplets about school behavior: “Taking turns and standing tall. / That’s the spirit. Let’s PLAY BALL.” Students find seats, have circle time, play, share, learn together, and create a sense of school spirit as they go through their day from drop-off to pickup. The irresistible rhythm of this chant will have a participatory storytime up and running quickly. The type highlights the words to be chanted, so young readers can see the participatory lines as they arise. The illustrations use bright streaks of color and generous white space to match the energy of the text, and the depiction of diverse humans is refreshing in this season’s animal-heavy list of school stories. Character details offer opportunities for children to notice and guess what some of the children may be feeling. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This celebration of school spirit is sure to get the energy flowing. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-10832-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
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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BOOK REVIEW
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his...
It’s a wonderful day in the jungle, so why’s Jim Panzee so grumpy?
When Jim woke up, nothing was right: "The sun was too bright, the sky was too blue, and bananas were too sweet." Norman the gorilla asks Jim why he’s so grumpy, and Jim insists he’s not. They meet Marabou, to whom Norman confides that Jim’s grumpy. When Jim denies it again, Marabou points out that Jim’s shoulders are hunched; Jim stands up. When they meet Lemur, Lemur points out Jim’s bunchy eyebrows; Jim unbunches them. When he trips over Snake, Snake points out Jim’s frown…so Jim puts on a grimacelike smile. Everyone has suggestions to brighten his mood: dancing, singing, swinging, swimming…but Jim doesn’t feel like any of that. He gets so fed up, he yells at his animal friends and stomps off…then he feels sad about yelling. He and Norman (who regrets dancing with that porcupine) finally just have a sit and decide it’s a wonderful day to be grumpy—which, of course, makes them both feel a little better. Suzanne Lang’s encouragement to sit with your emotions (thus allowing them to pass) is nearly Buddhist in its take, and it will be great bibliotherapy for the crabby, cranky, and cross. Oscar-nominated animator Max Lang’s cartoony illustrations lighten the mood without making light of Jim’s mood; Jim has comically long arms, and his facial expressions are quite funny.
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his journey. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-53786-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
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