Today’s energetic, active grandparents and their young grandchildren can anticipate a lively extended visit filled with engagingly fun pursuits.
A pair of loving grandparents prompt their two grandchildren to think about all the things they will do together the next time the kids visit. “SOMEDAY / we’ll take a walk in the park / and wave to the ducks paddling in the pond.” Thin-lined, colorful drawings feature a vibrant couple—a balding grandfather and a grandmother with short graying hair—in youthful poses during warm summery outings with their kids (all family members present white). They ride bikes, garden, swim, picnic, draw with sidewalk chalk, fly kites, blow bubbles, read books together, and eventually share a living-room movie night with popcorn. After this litany of “someday”s, a double-page spread reveals grandparents on verso reading a letter from the kids and the kids on recto marking X’s on a calendar. Finally, “SOMEDAY… / SOMEDAY… // SOMEDAY IS HERE!” Grandparents and kids greet one another with hugs and smiles. While long-distance relationships can be a bit difficult to maintain even with the possibilities of today’s technology, this will surely encourage good strategic discussion to quell the impatience of waiting for the next welcoming stay at a grandparent’s home.
Captures the eager anticipation of reunions with loving grandparents . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5064-5400-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beaming Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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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 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY
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SEEN & HEARD
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