Offers a few laughs but not likely to become a storytime favorite.
A ghost sets out to design the perfect house for his family.
Their old house (an Addams Family–style mansion) having been condemned, the ghosts must relocate. Hard-hatted Leonard takes charge. The family finds a plot in an idyllic, leafy suburb. A contractor and a supplier are visibly uneasy with specter clients but take their money nonetheless. Leonard knows his way around a construction site, but at every step, family members object. The house isn’t haunted enough! It isn’t dank or dark! Where are the “creaks and leaks”? What about the cobwebs? Laconic Leonard is undeterred. Once the home is finished, it looks perfectly ordinary. Soon neighbors and a dog (last seen lifting a leg on the For Sale sign) arrive with a welcome balloon and brownies. As the ghosts peek out, the terrified humans flee, and the ghosts grab the goodies. Pleasant, precise cartoon-type art features realistic colors and depicts the phantoms as white blobs with arms, differentiated by accessories such as a bow tie, hair ribbon, or propeller cap. The puns might tickle adult readers, and the odd sight gag may elicit a chuckle here and there. Overall, though, it’s a lengthy buildup to a rather underwhelming punchline. Construction fans will go for the building parts, and the ghosts are admittedly quite endearing, but most readers will be disappointed. Human characters are diverse.
Offers a few laughs but not likely to become a storytime favorite. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 8, 2025
ISBN: 9780374392444
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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