Lovely to look at but inartfully told.
Following his adoption in Madame Martine (2014), Max the dog leads his owner on another chase—this time in the Louvre.
It's another Saturday—the day Madame Martine and Max venture out of their Paris apartment to explore. When Martine's friend Louis, a guard at the Louvre, meets her at the cafe and asks her to visit him, she makes excuses for never going: “It's so crowded, and they don't allow dogs.” Louis goes off to work while Martine and Max ride the Métro, getting off at the Palais Royale stop for a new adventure. When Max spots Louis near the Louvre’s employee entrance, he scampers past and into the museum, with the two in pursuit. But their chase is short-lived, and suddenly Max is in Martine's arms. Readers primed for a lesson in art history with a dash of humor will be disappointed; Louis excitedly points out exquisite masterpieces, but Martine is decidedly uninterested, solely focused on leaving before Max is spotted. Only when Louis shows her the Mona Lisa does Martine pause to admire an artwork. The tension sputters, and the story ends on an anticlimactic note. As in Brannen's first Martine and Max story, the beautiful watercolor illustrations starring the inimitable Max are expressive and carefully rendered—but altogether different is Martine's reaction to her first experience visiting a Paris landmark.
Lovely to look at but inartfully told. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8075-4907-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
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
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their...
Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry.
Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more she notices it and the larger it grows. The longer Ruby is affected by this Worry, the fewer colors appear on the page. Though she tries not to pay attention to the Worry, which no one else can see, ignoring it prevents her from enjoying the things that she once loved. Her constant anxiety about the Worry causes the bright yellow blob to crowd Ruby’s everyday life, which by this point is nearly all washes of gray and white. But at the playground, Ruby sees a boy sitting on a bench with a growing sky-blue Worry of his own. When she invites the boy to talk, his Worry begins to shrink—and when Ruby talks about her own Worry, it also grows smaller. By the book’s conclusion, Ruby learns to control her Worry by talking about what worries her, a priceless lesson for any child—or adult—conveyed in a beautifully child-friendly manner. Ruby presents black, with hair in cornrows and two big afro-puff pigtails, while the boy has pale skin and spiky black hair.
A valuable asset to the library of a child who experiences anxiety and a great book to get children talking about their feelings (. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5476-0237-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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