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FIVE LITTLE MONKEYS

From the Fingers & Toes Nursery Rhymes series

An unnecessary book.

A board-book reinterpretation of the well-known nursery rhyme.

Five playful and very colorful little monkeys are jumping on the…bed? Readers familiar with the rhyme would know that of course, but the signal piece of furniture in the rhyme is de-emphasized in the illustrations in this board book. A well-defined and easily recognizable bed would have been nice, given the book’s audience. Instead, more attention has been spent on five very intrusive little diagrammatic boxes on each page, intended to show the reader what the hand gestures accompanying the rhyme are. Readers familiar with the nursery rhyme will not need this, and readers encountering the nursery rhyme for the first time will not know what to make of these boxes. All that is accomplished is to clutter up the page. The large tabs on the side of the page keep track of the number of monkeys still jumping on the bed with the appropriate number of monkey faces on the recto; on the verso, fingers on a hand track the counting. Little hands will find the tabs helpful for turning the pages, but more fun can be had joining a storytime program at the library and reciting the rhyme along with the other attendees.

An unnecessary book. (Board book. 6 mos.-3)

Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-545-76762-0

Page Count: 12

Publisher: Cartwheel/Scholastic

Review Posted Online: June 28, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016

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LITTLE DAYMOND LEARNS TO EARN

It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.

How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!

John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)

Pub Date: March 21, 2023

ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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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