A young boy who vexes his teacher with his doodling proves the value of stories.
Bored in the back row among robotically posed classmates who are diverse racially if not in their facial expressions, Nick turns his imagination loose and doodles, quickly losing track of what he should be doing and attracting the teacher’s ire. “Stay inside not outside the lines, Nicholas. / Don’t doodle or scribble. Don’t make such a fuss. / Just color the pictures. They’re simple and plain.” But Nick can’t rein in his doodlings, and the teacher finally puts him on the spot to draw and tell a tale for the whole class. Daunted at first, he quickly spins a tale that not only enraptures his classmates, but wins over his teacher: “I didn’t know doodles / had stories that hid / outside all those lines / till I saw what you did.” And the class spends the rest of the day drawing and spinning stories of their own. “And Nicholas, well—do you know what he did? / He showed everyone where the best stories hid.” Readers may be befuddled at this declaration, as stories’ hiding places are certainly not clear from either the text or the simplistic cartoon illustrations. Nick is white; his anti–role model of a teacher has very light brown skin and glasses.
Kids’ imaginations can find stories in better places than this. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5064-5401-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Beaming Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A young spinach hater becomes a spinach lover after she has to grow her own in a class garden.
Unable to trade away the seed packet she gets from her teacher for tomatoes, cukes or anything else more palatable, Sylvia reluctantly plants and nurtures a pot of the despised veggie then transplants it outside in early spring. By the end of school, only the plot’s lettuce, radishes and spinach are actually ready to eat (talk about a badly designed class project!)—and Sylvia, once she nerves herself to take a nibble, discovers that the stuff is “not bad.” She brings home an armful and enjoys it from then on in every dish: “And that was the summer Sylvia Spivens said yes to spinach.” Raff uses unlined brushwork to give her simple cartoon illustrations a pleasantly freehand, airy look, and though Pryor skips over the (literally, for spinach) gritty details in both the story and an afterword, she does cover gardening basics in a simple and encouraging way.
Very young gardeners will need more information, but for certain picky eaters, the suggested strategy just might work. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9836615-1-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Readers to Eaters
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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