A celebration of female perseverance and success: brava!
A fair-skinned, freckle-spattered mom and her brown-skinned, dark-haired daughter each feel the nervousness that comes with approaching a new experience.
In a remarkably sparse text—sentences are often single words and only twice more than three words in length—the pair’s story unfolds side by side. Daughter is a plucky pitcher out to prove herself and improve her skills on the baseball field. Mom is a tenacious mason looking to secure a new job and execute it with excellence. Both are fiercely hardworking and determined, emphasized through the use of minimal words and the illustrations’ focus on the tasks at hand. After each secures her position, the bulk of the story depicts the daily grind required to reach her goal. Between pages of work, softly textured cartoons show mom and daughter taking respite at home, where it is just the two of them and their cat. While there is much to be done and each is tired at the end of the long days, there is no sense of struggle implied; empowerment abounds. The graphic-novel illustration style, in which windows of alternating action move the storyline forward, adds to the feeling that this duo of everyday heroines is unstoppable.
A celebration of female perseverance and success: brava! (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: March 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3663-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
Charming and thought-provoking proof that we all contain multitudes.
Oscar winner McConaughey offers intriguing life observations.
The series of pithy, wry comments, each starting with the phrase “Just because,” makes clear that each of us is a mass of contradictions: “Just because we’re friends, / doesn’t mean you can’t burn me. / Just because I’m stubborn, / doesn’t mean that you can’t turn me.” Witty, digitally rendered vignettes portray youngsters diverse in terms of race and ability (occasionally with pets looking on) dealing with everything from friendship drama to a nerve-wracking footrace. “Just because I’m dirty, / doesn’t mean I can’t get clean” is paired with an image of a youngster taking a bath while another character (possibly an older sibling) sits nearby, smiling. “Just because you’re nice, / doesn’t mean you can’t get mean” depicts the older one berating the younger one for tracking mud into the house. The artwork effectively brings to life the succinct, rhyming text and will help readers make sense of it. Perhaps, after studying the illustrations and gaining further insight into the comments, kids will reread and reflect upon them further. The final page unites the characters from earlier pages with a reassuring message for readers: “Just because the sun has set, / doesn’t mean it will not rise. / Because every day is a gift, / each one a new surprise. BELIEVE IT.” As a follow-up, readers should be encouraged to make their own suggestions to complete the titular phrase. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Charming and thought-provoking proof that we all contain multitudes. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780593622032
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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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