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THE FAIRIES OF HONEYSUCKLE HOLLOW

Name: THE FAIRIES OF HONEYSUCKLE HOLLOW
Author: Robyn Frampton
ISBN: 978-1-250-12264-3

by Robyn Frampton ; illustrated by Laura K. Horton ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Sparkling, shimmering, saccharine.

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Earn fairy wings through kindness and love.

An unnamed narrator depicted as a white girl in a dress goes into the forest and finds a fairy named Lily, a dark-skinned girl with pointed ears and wings like a stained-glass dragonfly’s. One wing is broken, and she’s lost her key to Honeysuckle Hollow, where the fairies dwell. The child helps Lily search while also assisting Lily in her horticultural duties. Eventually they find the key, which is near the door to the hollow. Invited inside, the protagonist shrinks to fit, and the two new friends join the ethnically diverse fairies’ celebration. The Fairy Queen, who has tan skin and black hair, thanks the child for selflessly helping Lily with a pair of “earned” shimmering, butterfly-shaped fairy wings. The “Fairy Code” ends the book, promoting kindness, care of nature, and friendship. This story is contemporary fairy fodder, adequate for young readers eagerly devouring anything they can find but adding nothing new to the collection. The mediocre, first-person verse maneuvers clauses to fit its rhyme scheme: “Her name was Lily—she was from a land most don’t know. / A forest that’s called Honeysuckle Hollow.” The sweet and delicate pictures, created digitally, are pastel-heavy and feature items derived from plants, like petal-and-leaf fairy clothing or stem wands. Each spread contains scattered sparkles to add that omnipresent magical feeling.

Sparkling, shimmering, saccharine. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-250-12264-3

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Imprint

Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
FIREFLY FOREST
by Robyn Frampton ; illustrated by Mike Heath

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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...

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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)