A joyous celebration of cultural heritage and grandchild-grandparent relationships.
In this third picture book from Lee and Do’s Discover With Jade series, a young girl helps her grandmother prepare a feast for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Jade, a brown-haired youngster of Chinese heritage, has been working with her Gung Gung (grandfather) to grow lots of fruit and vegetables in his garden. She joins her Popo (grandmother) to help cook Cantonese chow mein for lunch. The food is delicious, and with the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival coming up, Jade invites six young, diverse friends over to introduce them to this important celebration. She helps Popo make paper lanterns and several traditional dishes: winter melon soup, steamed fish, Chinese water spinach, chicken with ginger scallion sauce. The family purchases many other things from Chinatown (impressively presented in Do’s sideways double-page illustration). Jade’s pals enjoy the feast, and especially the mooncake desserts. Popo peels and carves pomelos (large, pear-shaped fruit) into lanterns and “helmets” before Jade and friends play beneath the full moon. Lee narrates the story from Jade’s perspective, effectively describing foods, ingredients, and activities with the enthusiasm of an excited young child. Do’s colorful images serve beautifully to convey the protagonist’s happy life and her close relationship with her grandma; they even wear matching shirts. The Mid-Autumn Festival emerges as a delightful, inclusive event.
A joyous celebration of cultural heritage and grandchild-grandparent relationships.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not enough tricks to make this a treat.
Another holiday title (How To Catch the Easter Bunny by Adam Wallace, illustrated by Elkerton, 2017) sticks to the popular series’ formula.
Rhyming four-line verses describe seven intrepid trick-or-treaters’ efforts to capture the witch haunting their Halloween. Rhyming roadblocks with toolbox is an acceptable stretch, but too often too many words or syllables in the lines throw off the cadence. Children familiar with earlier titles will recognize the traps set by the costume-clad kids—a pulley and box snare, a “Tunnel of Tricks.” Eventually they accept her invitation to “floss, bump, and boogie,” concluding “the dance party had hit the finale at last, / each dancing monster started to cheer! / There’s no doubt about it, we have to admit: / This witch threw the party of the year!” The kids are diverse, and their costumes are fanciful rather than scary—a unicorn, a dragon, a scarecrow, a red-haired child in a lab coat and bow tie, a wizard, and two space creatures. The monsters, goblins, ghosts, and jack-o'-lanterns, backgrounded by a turquoise and purple night sky, are sufficiently eerie. Still, there isn’t enough originality here to entice any but the most ardent fans of Halloween or the series. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Not enough tricks to make this a treat. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-72821-035-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2022
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