Helpful reading practice where needed.
Best friends Allie and Amy have plans for their summer, but when they are nearly separated, they have to zoom through their summer to-do list.
It’s the first day of summer vacation, and Amy and Allie can’t wait to get started on their short list of “Things To Do This Summer.” But they’ve only completed one item when Allie’s parents tell her that she got a spot at Camp Merry Moose. At first she is excited, but when she calls Amy, Amy tells her she can’t go because then they’ll be separated. Allie tries to back out of camp, but her parents won’t hear of it. So she devises a plan to bind herself to Amy, which, predictably, doesn’t last long. The best friends decide they will have to rush through their list. Using the alarms on their watches, they speed through their fun in time for Allie to pack for camp. Their farewell is too quick to take seriously, but it turns out they don’t have to separate after all. The large, generously spaced typeset is broken up by half-page black-and-white illustrations, and a word list gives pronunciations and definitions of less-common words. The story is more fast than fun, and it sacrifices realism and emotional resonance for speed. Still, it serves its narrow purpose of bridging the gap between beginning readers and chapter books. Allie and her family are black, Amy and her family are white, and an annoying-boy secondary character has a Spanish surname.
Helpful reading practice where needed. (reading questions) (Fiction. 4-9)Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5344-5251-0
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Aladdin QUIX
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
As insubstantial as hot air.
A diverse cast of children first makes a fleet of hot air balloons and then takes to the sky in them.
Lifestyle maven Gaines uses this activity as a platform to celebrate diversity in learning and working styles. Some people like to work together; others prefer a solo process. Some take pains to plan extensively; others know exactly what they want and jump right in. Some apply science; others demonstrate artistic prowess. But “see how beautiful it can be when / our differences share the same sky?” Double-page spreads leading up to this moment of liftoff are laid out such that rhyming abcb quatrains typically contain one or two opposing concepts: “Some of us are teachers / and share what we know. / But all of us are learners. / Together is how we grow!” In the accompanying illustration, a bespectacled, Asian-presenting child at a blackboard lectures the other children on “balloon safety.” Gaines’ text has the ring of sincerity, but the sentiment is hardly an original one, and her verse frequently sacrifices scansion for rhyme. Sometimes it abandons both: “We may not look / or work or think the same, / but we all have an / important part to play.” Swaney’s delicate, pastel-hued illustrations do little to expand on the text, but they are pretty. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11.2-by-18.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 70.7% of actual size.)
As insubstantial as hot air. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4003-1423-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2021
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