Cute but nothing more.
Itty-bitty piggies demonstrate opposites.
An adorable “small” black-spotted piglet gazes out at readers from next to a “big” sleeping adult in the first double-page spread. Turn the page to find a “messy” piglet daubed with bright paint opposite a “clean” piglet artfully draped with lather in a tub, with bubbles floating around. One mildly inventive spread depicts two sleepy piggies “inside” a little toy house with two pairs of pink, polka-dot wellies flanking the door; opposite is one piggy standing in the grass “outside” with all four wellies on. None of the opposite pairs is particularly startling, and although most more or less illustrate the concepts, readers will have to work hard to see that the “cold” piggy is walking across frost-rimed leaves. (The “hot” piggy is sunning itself in a folding chair.) Back-of-the-book copy trumpets that its models are “Those Famous Teacup Pigs of Pennywell Farm,” an English breeder of “miniature pigs.” Since the subjects have been so studiously posed with toy props, however, there is no sense of scale to give readers a sense of how diminutive they actually are, and to the uneducated eye, they might as well just be equally adorable full-size piglets.
Cute but nothing more. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7611-8548-2
Page Count: 22
Publisher: Workman
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Sylvester's "only chance of becoming himself again was for someone to find the red pebble and to wish that the rock next to it would be a donkey"—surely the prize predicament of the year and, in William Steig's pearly colors, one of the prettiest. How Mother and Father Duncan (donkey), despairing of finding their son, do eventually break the red pebble's spell and bring back Sylvester is a fable of happy families of all breeds.
Pub Date: March 1, 1969
ISBN: 1416902066
Page Count: 42
Publisher: Windmill Books
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1969
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