A practically irresistible serving of bright, wacky energy.
Something is underfoot at Rene’s restaurant.
Chef Rene—the tan-skinned proprietor introduced in The Café at the Edge of the Woods (2024)—and her green-skinned, steadfast sous chef, maître d’, and all-around helper, Glumfoot, encounter a new challenge to keeping their dining establishment afloat: an infestation! Rene spots footprints on the ground and hears odd noises, and a dessert even goes missing. Rene tries traps for mice, finally building her own Rube Goldberg–esque version. She catches three small creatures, but they are not mice. Rene is distressed when she realizes she’s inadvertently built her business atop the home of some tiny, strange bears. Their kind (“the pygmy bear / the bear-me pig”) is introduced in a book that Glumfoot happens to be reading. These unusual, nearly extinct creatures are decidedly odd, in keeping with the rest of the forest’s inhabitants, and quite civilized in their borrowers’ den under the floorboards. Each grown-up bear, somewhat bigger than a fig, sports a delightfully peculiar hat. Rene is all set to abandon her business, but one of the bears has an idea, and Rene and Glumfoot cook up a plan to allow all to live in harmony. Featuring slightly uneven rhymes, Please’s entertaining narrative serves its purpose as a vehicle for his dynamic, silly, and amusing visual depiction of the weird happenings at Rene’s restaurant and the curious denizens of the enchanted forest.
A practically irresistible serving of bright, wacky energy. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780063479937
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
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More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2026
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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