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THUNDER-BOOMER!

A little girl’s lazy summer day quickly turns soggy when a violent thunderstorm drenches their family farm. Scurrying to shelter, they tear laundry from the clothesline and coop their fussing chickens along the way. With unrelenting ferocity, rain pours in and hail pounds down as her father frets over the likely damage. After the thunder-boomer subsides, the daughter receives an unlikely surprise when her favorite hen leads her to an orphaned kitten. Vivid imagery and Thompson’s innovative mixed-media art that incorporates textual sound effects naturally reflect the weather’s dramatic ebb and flow. The child’s engaging first-person voice propels the account of the storm. “Gusting rain pelts the roof. The maple’s branches brush and wump against the walls.” The sky’s rumble is reflected in dynamic phrases lettered against the dark storm clouds. Watercolor, gouache, pastels and crayons smoothly combine to depict the outburst’s unyielding power; colored splashes speckle the muddy mess. Powerful lines and thick, swaying strokes vary shading with dramatic emphasis. Intermittent collage patches subtly enhance the textured scenes, providing a wildly successful sanctuary from this soaking storm. (Picture book. 4-8)  

Pub Date: June 15, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-618-61865-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Clarion Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009

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THE DAY THE CRAYONS MADE FRIENDS

Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.

After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.

Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.

Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: June 3, 2025

ISBN: 9780593622360

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Philomel

Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

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

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