A love song to libraries and kids who find joy in reading.
A young girl solves the problem of her school library’s checkout limit in Sharp’s picture-book ode to book-lending.
Zoey is enchanted by books; she wants her Nana to read them to her from the beginning to the end. As she learns to read herself, it becomes her favorite activity. She writes her own stories in sidewalk chalk and in scrapbooks. At school, she’s delighted to see there’s a library, but wait—“the school had a limit. / WHAT???? ONE BOOK PER VISIT!” Montgomery’s soft-edged illustrations capture Zoey’s dismay perfectly: How can a child with insatiable curiosity ever read all of the books she wants if she can only take out one at a time? The solution: Nana takes Zoey to the public library, and soon after, Zoey takes all her friends. When they all decide to bring books for Zoey’s show-and-tell, Zoey’s able to share her love of the library with her class. The story comes full circle, imagining Zoey as a grandmother reading to her own story-loving grandchild. Sharp’s story is sweet and full of library love. In the text’s verses, the scansion and rhyme schemes vary—rhymes sometimes occur in the middle of a couplet, rather than at the end, making it easy to lose the rhythm in a read-aloud. But the story shines through, elevated by Montgomery’s pictures of blond-haired Zoey’s classroom and her diverse group of friends.
A love song to libraries and kids who find joy in reading.Pub Date: Dec. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9781779442321
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Miriam Laundry Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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