by Renata Liwska ; illustrated by Renata Liwska ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 7, 2019
It feels fresh at the start, but it fizzles out.
An unseen narrator suggests a wide range of what-ifs, each playing out in a single scene among a group of animals.
Liwska’s animal group includes bears, mice, elephants, and more, but because they’re all drawn in the same range of browns and grays, with similar curved pencil hatchings for fur/skin, and closer to the same size than realism would dictate, they feel like a tightknit community. When one is depicted calling out a window to oblivious figures who are all wearing earbuds, the text—“What if no one could hear you?”—is truly upsetting. Some of the what-ifs pair as unsettling opposites: Across from “What if no one could hear you?” sits “What if everyone could?” as the same character vainly trying to attract attention before is now seen snoring in public. Many hypotheticals are tenderly humorous. “What if there was only one kind?”—and all tea was banana-flavored? What if a seed doesn’t grow—or does, but a bespectacled burrowing animal snaps off the carrot underground and eats it? Soft pencil drawings in a muted palette bring comfort to moments of concern. However, there’s an unexpected prescriptive turn. Moving from musings on vulnerability to ponderings such as “What if we all work together?” and “What if everyone shared?” the text shifts into banal hypotheticals that even the youngest readers will recognize as instructions. Nothing wrong with activism, but this is a bait-and-switch.
It feels fresh at the start, but it fizzles out. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-76701-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016
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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by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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