For young readers with a taste for the ominous.
“Brenda is a sheep,” this tale insists. In Hood’s recognizable style, cheerfully straightforward text clashes sharply with the story told through the illustrations. Brenda, after all, is clearly a wolf, with her sharp teeth and gray coat, bright-orange “nice woolly sweater” notwithstanding. She doesn’t seem to enjoy the company of sheep, either, looking frustrated at the constant “baa”-ing around her (she is almost buried in iterations of “BAA” that cover 2/3 of the page) and disgusted by grass; her preferred games are tag and archery. Tension grows as Brenda starts preparing for a feast, making a huge vat of mint sauce (readers might need an explanation that this is a common condiment for lamb dishes). But Brenda’s plans are foiled when the sheep, all now dressed similarly in orange sweaters made from their own wool, plan a banquet of their own for their beloved friend: delicacies shaped from grass. It seems that the wolf’s carnivorous instincts have been curbed, for now. The humor derives from the tension between the innocent story being read aloud and the more sinister elements left unspoken, though the text’s insistence that Brenda is a sheep might lead to some awkward and unsatisfying conversations about identity and embodiment. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10.1-by-20.2-inch double-page spreads viewed at 17.7% of actual size.)
For young readers with a taste for the ominous. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-17380-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2020
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
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
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)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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