A lush and lovely celebration of urban nature’s gifts.
A banyan tree protects an apartment building and its inhabitants.
This artistically emphatic story opens with a sweep of the Hong Kong harbor skyline. A bird swoops by with a seed in its mouth, dropping it “into a crack in a green tong lau.” The tong lau, a term that may be unfamiliar to some readers, is revealed to be a somewhat shabby tenement buzzing with life, from a ground-level shop selling roast goose to kids playing on the rooftop amid potted plants and laundry lines. As the seed sprouts into a banyan tree, it finds its place in this sweet symphony. The tree’s roots crawl down the walls into the ground below, birds and insects make homes in its branches, and children swing from its aerial roots. The adults criticize the arboreal interloper—it blocks sunlight! It’s scaring pets!—but, in a most dramatic fashion, the community soon discovers the benefits of welcoming green into the concrete jungle. Sy’s text, tucked between leafy branches and crowded rooms, highlights tangible sensations: the smells and tastes, muggy summer weather, and daily routines of urban existence. Jain’s watercolors unfurl, vinelike, so palpable that one can discern the texture of the paper they were painted on. Immersing themselves in this sensory experience, readers will easily appreciate the tong lau as an interdependent microcosm unto itself.
A lush and lovely celebration of urban nature’s gifts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 25, 2026
ISBN: 9780593858448
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Kokila
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2026
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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