Day’s picture-book debut purports to encourage ingenuity, perseverance, and girls’ interest in STEM but falls short of its...
Their trash is her treasure, and she’ll prove its value to the naysayers in town.
Sylvia Samantha Wright seems to be the only person who sees the potential in discarded objects such as old pipes, overstock party hats, and half-rotten bananas. When skeptics comment on her habit of collecting junk, she doggedly says she’s “working on something.” However, when elderly Ezekiel Mather finally asks what she’s working on, she confesses that she doesn’t know. He encourages her, saying: “That’s the best part….The part before you know.” A series of townwide disasters gives Sylvia an opportunity to demonstrate how the junk she collects can be utilized in feats of engineering and problem-solving. Cartoonish line drawings with colorful, textural accents support the exaggerated silliness of the disasters, but the text’s humor somewhat tarnishes the sincerity of its empowering message. An unnecessarily wordy recurring punchline concerns an incompetent female mayor (no room for two intelligent female characters with agency in this town!). (It’s also a pretty homogeneous town; all the named characters are white, with only a few scattered characters of color in the occasional background.) Despite Sylvia’s refrain, “I’m working on something,” both text and illustrations avoid depicting her much-hyped problem-solving process by leapfrogging over it to the final results of her efforts.
Day’s picture-book debut purports to encourage ingenuity, perseverance, and girls’ interest in STEM but falls short of its potential. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-58536-400-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
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A charming mix of science lesson and winsome storytelling.
The perky red squirrel introduced in The Leaf Thief (2020) is confused.
Bird and Squirrel both love summer, but when Bird calls out a cheery “Night night,” Squirrel, yawning himself, is incredulous: “BEDTIME? It can’t be! The sun’s still up, look!” Naturally there’s a lot more bewilderment ahead. Some weeks later, Squirrel is alarmed to see it’s dark at toothbrushing time. In skittish Squirrel’s view, a “sun thief”—who also made an odd “hoo” sound the other night—is responsible. Bird explains that as summer goes on, the sun sets earlier and earlier each night and reassures Squirrel that owls cry “hoo.” But the very next evening, at bathtime, Squirrel shines a bright light into the dark, sees something looming, and screams that the sun thief has “crashed into my tree!” Patient Bird, roused from slumber, points out that it’s just Bat. But “why was she flapping about in the dark?” Now Bird explains what nocturnal means. Once again, Squirrel is amusingly slow on the uptake, allowing readers to feel superior as Hemming gently folds in some science. Slater’s witty illustrations also lighten the lessons: Bird hangs a tiny T-shirt and shorts on a diminutive laundry line and sleeps tucked into a cozy repurposed sardine can, where a scared Squirrel attempts to squeeze in; Squirrel sports a pink bath towel and shower cap; a real thief quietly makes off with a couple of items (though Squirrel and Bird remain blissfully unaware).
A charming mix of science lesson and winsome storytelling. (info on light changes and diurnal/nocturnal) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464258183
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2026
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BOOK REVIEW
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