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: June 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781998215546
Page Count: 46
Publisher: Pomelo Hat Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A top-grade creepy/funny addition to the spooky-picture-book canon.
Is a cute kitty built in a castle’s laboratory responsible for the bad things that start happening?
“Here is a tale to chill the blood and thrill the soul—a tale of spooky paws and eerie claws.” The disembodied talking skull who narrates this story is alluding to Frankenkitty, who was engineered out of multiple cats, with visible stitches to show for it. As the house ghouls look on, Frankenkitty’s inventor laments, “I’ve created a monster!” Sure enough, bad things start happening: The mummy begins to unravel. Kitchen mice terrorize the cook. Certainly, Frankenkitty must be to blame. But after the butler, who resembles Frankenstein’s Monster, tosses Frankenkitty outside into the snow, where he looks forlorn and adorable, the skull has second thoughts: “Wait! Did we get it wrong?” It’s up to readers to make the call. Powell-Tuck goes all in with her spoof of old-time horror tropes, although kids needn’t know who Boris Karloff is to be tickled. For the book’s every scare (a severed foot and hand, their bones visible), there’s a wink (in a bit of metafictive fun, the skull urges readers to opt for a story about “unicorns, beasts, or bears”). Grey, a glutton for detail, leans on menacing reds and sickly greens to capture the frights, which include, in a line for the spooky-story ages, “walls as gray as old underpants.” Human characters vary in skin tone.
A top-grade creepy/funny addition to the spooky-picture-book canon. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781664300972
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tiger Tales
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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