A rose-colored homage to the power of food to build community in a Manhattan melting pot.
This evocative tour of New York City's Lower East Side celebrates the neighborhood’s immigrant cultures.
A tan-skinned Jewish child, old enough for an independent outing, walks through the neighborhood toward the many varied food markets. Along the way, he connects with friends of Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Indian descent, and they gather food from each of their cultures. The wistful text juxtaposes the street-level specifics of urban living—a kosher grocery store, a bodega cat, a roast duck hanging in a window—with philosophical musings about the meaning of home. The digital illustrations mirror this effect, as foregrounded exchanges in the Manhattan markets give way to nostalgic backgrounds depicting the children’s families’ homelands. The postures of the children and their neighbors convey a welcoming warmth, inviting readers—and possibly newcomers—into the markets’ small domains. A quirk of the illustrated eyes, however, makes the lighter-skinned characters look overwhelmingly exhausted, a distracting idiosyncrasy that works against the deliberate positivity of the text. Backmatter provides brief context for each of the Lower East Side cultures depicted in the book, and maps on the endpapers hint at further foods and cultures around the corner. Though the text acknowledges changes over time, it doesn’t mention gentrification, which threatens the robustness of all these neighborhood microcosms.
A rose-colored homage to the power of food to build community in a Manhattan melting pot. (author’s and illustrator’s notes) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024
ISBN: 9781250834171
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
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
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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