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SWEET LABA CONGEE

Sweet and simple, like a warm bowl of laba congee on a cold day.

A small child shows readers how their family celebrates the traditional Chinese Laba Festival.

In what looks like a small Chinese village, the young protagonist introduces readers to the Laba Festival, celebrated on the eighth day of the 12th month of the lunar year. Through deceptively simple poetic prose and whimsical typesetting, readers learn that making sweet laba congee, a tasty porridge made from many valuable ingredients, is a highlight of the holiday. The family prepares the ingredients the day before and then cooks it on a traditional wood-burning stove (not their new gas stove) to guarantee that “it will be perfect.” Then they use it as an offering to their ancestors, asking for good luck for themselves and their family, including the child’s father, who is “working in a different city.” They take some in a pot to elderly neighbors, and they smear it on the big persimmon tree that grows in the yard of their home compound. Most importantly, the grandmother, mother, and child sit to enjoy it together. Delicate and charming illustrations of village life recall an earlier time, but hints like having a gas stove and an uncle away at university indicate that this may be a deliberate nod to those who live in poorer conditions right now.

Sweet and simple, like a warm bowl of laba congee on a cold day. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: May 22, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-4788-6934-4

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Reycraft Books

Review Posted Online: March 24, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020

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WRECKING BALL

From the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series , Vol. 14

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.

The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.

When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.

Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Amulet/Abrams

Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK'S CHRISTMAS

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...

The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.

The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.

Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3

Page Count: 24

Publisher: HMH Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

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