A gorgeously crafted paean to attentive seeing that will send readers outdoors hungry to coin their own wild words.
An exquisite and wondrous celebration of nature’s vocabulary.
Ada and Cora, brown-skinned youngsters with long dark hair, embark on exploratory rambles through stream, meadow, beach, mountain, and forest, collecting both specimens and the precise words that name what they see. Francis introduces readers to terms such as eddies (twisting currents) and scree (scattered mountain stones), weaving genuine nature terminology with invented compounds like stonelight and bottomshimmer. The narrative pulses with quiet wonder, enticing young naturalists to see wastelands transformed into “wildy-ness” teeming with “concrete breakers,” “rooty spies,” and “creeping petals.” Vangsnes’ watercolor, pastel, and collage illustrations create textured landscapes where golden meadows dissolve into abstract dots of light, forest canopies glow with “fairygold” luminescence, and tide pools become kaleidoscopic arrangements of sea stars and rockweed. Her compositional choices mirror the children’s shifting perspectives: aerial views of hillside scrambles, intimate close-ups of “websparkle” on dewdrops, expansive night skies swirling with possibility. The art has an organic energy; words dance across pages in varied fonts and orientations, visual onomatopoeia for wildspeak itself. Scrapbook-style endpapers featuring Ada and Cora’s nature journal sketches extend the invitation to observe, name, and create.
A gorgeously crafted paean to attentive seeing that will send readers outdoors hungry to coin their own wild words. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781464261299
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book.
Ada Twist’s incessant stream of questions leads to answers that help solve a neighborhood crisis.
Ada conducts experiments at home to answer questions such as, why does Mom’s coffee smell stronger than Dad’s coffee? Each answer leads to another question, another hypothesis, and another experiment, which is how she goes from collecting data on backyard birds for a citizen-science project to helping Rosie Revere figure out how to get her uncle Ned down from the sky, where his helium-filled “perilous pants” are keeping him afloat. The Questioneers—Rosie the engineer, Iggy Peck the architect, and Ada the scientist—work together, asking questions like scientists. Armed with knowledge (of molecules and air pressure, force and temperature) but more importantly, with curiosity, Ada works out a solution. Ada is a recognizable, three-dimensional girl in this delightfully silly chapter book: tirelessly curious and determined yet easily excited and still learning to express herself. If science concepts aren’t completely clear in this romp, relationships and emotions certainly are. In playful full- and half-page illustrations that break up the text, Ada is black with Afro-textured hair; Rosie and Iggy are white. A closing section on citizen science may inspire readers to get involved in science too; on the other hand, the “Ode to a Gas!” may just puzzle them. Other backmatter topics include the importance of bird study and the threat palm-oil use poses to rainforests.
Adventure, humor, and smart, likable characters make for a winning chapter book. (Fiction. 6-9)Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3422-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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