A great way to introduce kids to their foods’ origins and to prepare them for a greenmarket visit of their own.
With an interactive maze/map, Munro demystifies for children where all the items for sale at the farmers market originate.
Readers must navigate each page’s directions and maze to collect and ship the items. “Guide the boat to the dock’s loading area. Transfer the catch to the FISH truck, go to the fish-packing plant, and drive toward town.” Readers also collect apples, milk, cheese, corn, flowers, eggs, veggies, baked goods, and kids (going on a field trip to the greenmarket). Less a map than an aerial view of different areas, the illustrations lack any compass or map key, so children will need their powers of observation and deduction to notice the only dock and the only boat out to sea, the truck marked with a fish, and the building with the same sign out front (the challenges seem to grow in difficulty with page turns). Arrows mark one-way streets (not correct paths!), and readers must puzzle the shortest way to get from one page turn to the next. Lists of items to find in the bright, busy, detailed India ink and colored acrylic ink illustrations extend the fun. The backmatter includes thumbnails marking both the shortest routes and the hidden items, and a paragraph under each goes into more detail about the featured market item.
A great way to introduce kids to their foods’ origins and to prepare them for a greenmarket visit of their own. (Interactive informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3092-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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Not astonishingly go-out-and-buy-it-at-graduation inspirational, but all it takes is one seed of change to be planted.
Imagination soars—quite literally—when a little girl follows her own set of rules.
Every year Oak Hill School has a go-kart race called the Going Places contest. Students are given identical go-kart kits with a precise set of instructions. And of course, every single kart ends up exactly the same. Every one, that is, except Maya’s. Maya is a dreamy artist, and she would rather sketch birds in her backyard than get caught up in the competition. When she finally does start working, she uses the parts in the go-kart box but creates something completely different. No one ever said it had to be a go-kart. Maya’s creative thinking inspires Rafael, her neighbor (and the most enthusiastic Going Places contestant), to ask to team up. The instructions never say they couldn’t work together, either! An ode to creativity and individuality to be sure, but the Reynolds brothers are also taking a swipe at modern education: Endless repetition and following instructions without question create a culture of conformity. Hopefully now, readers will see infinite possibility every time the system hands them an identical go-kart box.
Not astonishingly go-out-and-buy-it-at-graduation inspirational, but all it takes is one seed of change to be planted. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-6608-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
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BOOK REVIEW
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard.
A grouchy sapling on a Christmas tree farm finds that there are better things than lights and decorations for its branches.
A Grinch among the other trees on the farm is determined never to become a sappy Christmas tree—and never to leave its spot. Its determination makes it so: It grows gnarled and twisted and needle-less. As time passes, the farm is swallowed by the suburbs. The neighborhood kids dare one another to climb the scary, grumpy-looking tree, and soon, they are using its branches for their imaginative play, the tree serving as a pirate ship, a fort, a spaceship, and a dragon. But in winter, the tree stands alone and feels bereft and lonely for the first time ever, and it can’t look away from the decorated tree inside the house next to its lot. When some parents threaten to cut the “horrible” tree down, the tree thinks, “Not now that my limbs are full of happy children,” showing how far it has come. Happily for the tree, the children won’t give up so easily, and though the tree never wished to become a Christmas tree, it’s perfectly content being a “trick or tree.” Martinez’s digital illustrations play up the humorous dichotomy between the happy, aspiring Christmas trees (and their shoppers) and the grumpy tree, and the diverse humans are satisfyingly expressive.
Just the thing for anyone with a Grinch-y tree of their own in the yard. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7335-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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