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HOW THE CRAYONS SAVED THE UNICORN

Name: HOW THE CRAYONS SAVED THE UNICORN
Author: Monica Sweeney
ISBN: 978-1-5107-4819-4

by Monica Sweeney ; illustrated by Feronia Parker Thomas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2019

What’s not to like? (Picture book. 4-7)

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A quest for friendship and confidence with crayons and a unicorn at the helm.

A lonely unicorn looks for friends but is rejected by fish, birds, and butterflies all in one morning! The unicorn’s splashing and peering and the butterflies’ fluttering make for fantastic read-aloud opportunities, and similar opportunities for action, sounds, and conversation are sprinkled throughout the story. The unicorn searches for friends on spreads with negative space as background, his rainbow mane popping against them in the line-and-color illustrations, which have an unschooled look. But his rainbow tail fades to a dusty gray as his confidence wanes. Enter a band of seven anthropomorphic crayons on a double-page spread that introduces their distinct personalities via speech-bubble exclamations. The speech bubbles with hand-lettered text, a gentle black italicized type for the narrative text, and the unsophisticated illustration style combine to invite readers into the unicorn’s world. The crayons and unicorn embark on joyous adventures, with continued chances to promote phonological awareness, vocabulary-building, and social-emotional learning. Despite the contributions of his newfound friends, the unicorn’s colors fade again, and he must draw strength from within to restore them. This reminder that friends do not solve all problems is a welcome complexity. The no-frills attitude of this book makes it ripe for entertainment or for deeper discussion.

What’s not to like? (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-5107-4819-4

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Sky Pony Press

Review Posted Online: June 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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RUBY FINDS A WORRY

From the Big Bright Feelings series

by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019

A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...

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Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.

Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.

A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)