Colorful and creative—a crafty way to impart life lessons.
In Olson’s picture book, a button who loves dancing must conquer her stage fright.
Emily, an anthropomorphized button the color and texture of a strawberry, is happy dancing and twirling her blue ribbon in the privacy of her craft-box bedroom. Her friend Becky, a yellow button, enters them both in a talent show, but Emily doesn’t want to dance in public—she’s very anxious about making a mistake (“I might mess up”). But she agrees, for Becky’s sake. They practice hard, and once they’re on stage together, Emily is able to perform…until she trips on her ribbon and falls down. Luckily, Becky keeps singing. Emily picks herself up and restarts her routine. After the show, her button friends all congratulate her and ask her to teach them dancing. Olson tells Emily’s story through simple prose and exquisitely staged photographs depicting actual google-eyed buttons with wire legs and arms. The scenes are ingenious in their composition, incorporating motion shots (note especially Emily’s ribbon dances, and the juggling tableau on Page 14), setting-appropriate repurposings (such as pencils for bench seats), a mixture of artfully focused close-up and establishing shots, and copious background details to contextualize the button protagonists. Emily is a relatable character and her trepidation will resonate with many a budding young performer. That she actually does mess up is an astute plot development, teaching kids to embrace the doing and sharing of what they love—not to overvalue being perfect at it.
Colorful and creative—a crafty way to impart life lessons.Pub Date: April 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798986047263
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Bellie Button Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
