An endearing adventure, brilliantly enhanced with subtle reminders to consider environmental preservation and protection.
A young child and a polar bear spend a splendid day together.
Seemingly home alone, a youngster draws, reads, and plays with a toy train until an interrupting “KNOCK KNOCK” sends the child to grab a chair to check the door’s peephole. An ursine visitor enters, ready for all sorts of playful possibilities. They raid the fridge and the bear takes a bath before the child’s parent returns bearing groceries. Somehow the furry visitor knows to stay out of parental view, but the new friends continue their fun far past bedtime until the bear must return home. With this mostly wordless, whimsical wonder, South Korean debut author/artist Park places her exquisitely realistic, meticulously intricate drawings, made with colored pencil, watercolor, acrylic paint, ink, and collage, directly onto discarded cardboard. Beyond the onomatopoeic “KNOCK KNOCK,” the only other visible type is imprinted on the bear, as if it were garbed in Korean newspaper. Human and bear interactions are charming throughout—their complicit silence, their delighted dancing, the child’s tearful understanding of their impending parting. Park cleverly adds an underlying environmental message, with the polar bear a universal symbol of shrinking wildlife habitats, presented in materials embodying recycling and reusing. Front and back endpapers reveal the cardboard core, capturing child and bear initially connecting through the door’s peephole. All (human) characters are South Korean; the poignant goodbye occurs on the Busan coastline where Park resides.
An endearing adventure, brilliantly enhanced with subtle reminders to consider environmental preservation and protection. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2026
ISBN: 9781782509776
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Floris
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
