by Stacie Isabella Turk illustrated by Gary Solomon Mike Muffins ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A compilation that’s best for libraries looking to increase their offerings about positive thinking and gratitude.
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Three stories showcase being grateful and thinking outside the box in Turk’s debut collection, with color and black-and-white illustrations by debut artists Solomon and Muffins.
Does your brain have a committee of voices judging you? Do you ever suspect that your neighbors are aliens, content to live humdrum lives? Are you so grumpy and grouchy that you forget to be grateful? These are the types of questions asked by the three tales in this book. In “Sabrina and Her Committee,” a young girl with very long hair and a huge imagination discovers small voices, nestled in her hair, which criticize her. Eventually she finds the smaller voice of her heart, Grace, which teaches her to love herself. Unfortunately for Sabrina, her schoolteacher is the loudest of the critics outside her head, judging her penmanship, her focus, her art, and her appearance. Indeed, the teacher’s verbal abuse will surely elicit commentary from adult readers. Turk captures Sabrina’s genuine worries very well, though adults may wish that the character focused less on being “pretty enough.” Solomon’s brightly colored ink-and-paint illustrations reveal Sabrina’s big personality. “Mediocrity,” a list of rules for identifying aliens from the “planet, ADEQUATE from the universe, MEDIOCRE,” will make readers think about whether the people they encounter every day are merely sleeping through average lives; it’s accompanied by Solomon’s grayscale cartoons. “Grumpy, Grouchy, and Grateful,” featuring boldly colored, humorous illustrations from Muffins, tells of three caterpillar brothers, only one of whom bothers to look at the world around him and hope for a brighter future. Each story offers opportunities for young readers to identify themselves and recognize attitudes and behaviors that may make it hard to succeed and be happy. Turk uses an accessible vocabulary in the sometimes–text-dense stories and creates fun characters with whom children will empathize. The varying art styles fit their stories well and are sure to draw interested browsers. The book also includes an audio CD (not reviewed).
A compilation that’s best for libraries looking to increase their offerings about positive thinking and gratitude.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ribbonhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Jeff Kinney ; illustrated by Jeff Kinney ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2019
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
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More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2014
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own...
The sturdy Little Blue Truck is back for his third adventure, this time delivering Christmas trees to his band of animal pals.
The truck is decked out for the season with a Christmas wreath that suggests a nose between headlights acting as eyeballs. Little Blue loads up with trees at Toad’s Trees, where five trees are marked with numbered tags. These five trees are counted and arithmetically manipulated in various ways throughout the rhyming story as they are dropped off one by one to Little Blue’s friends. The final tree is reserved for the truck’s own use at his garage home, where he is welcomed back by the tree salestoad in a neatly circular fashion. The last tree is already decorated, and Little Blue gets a surprise along with readers, as tiny lights embedded in the illustrations sparkle for a few seconds when the last page is turned. Though it’s a gimmick, it’s a pleasant surprise, and it fits with the retro atmosphere of the snowy country scenes. The short, rhyming text is accented with colored highlights, red for the animal sounds and bright green for the numerical words in the Christmas-tree countdown.
Little Blue’s fans will enjoy the animal sounds and counting opportunities, but it’s the sparkling lights on the truck’s own tree that will put a twinkle in a toddler’s eyes. (Picture book. 2-5)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-32041-3
Page Count: 24
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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