A comforting, encouraging, and practical bedtime story for the troubled sleeper.
A mother helps her little boy to plan his dreams before sleeping in Ojo’s picture book.
Alexander, an elementary-school-aged boy, is in bed at bedtime. His mama turns off the light and his red, starry nightlight comes on, but he’s not sleepy and doesn’t want his parent to leave: “Please, one more book? One more kiss? / One more hug?” Mama curls up beside him for one last cuddle; she senses that he feels scared, so she asks, “What should we do / in your dreams tonight?” This sparks Alexander’s imagination, and he thinks of various dreams he could dream, involving cuddling his baby brother, slam-dunking a basketball with his older sibling, lying on a dinosaur’s back and looking at the stars, or driving trucks with his mama. Tan’s dreamy illustrations offer stylized characters and watercolor settings with soft spots of color that illuminate Alexander’s bedroom and the purple night sky. The imagined daytime scenes are bright and fun, and they complement the theme of embracing new adventures. Ojo’s rhyming verse has a melodious quality that embodies the story’s calm tone. The book’s ending prepares readers for slumber: “So what will you do / in your dreams this sleep?” Alexander is portrayed with brown skin; his mother has a pale skin tone.
A comforting, encouraging, and practical bedtime story for the troubled sleeper.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9798218432447
Page Count: 24
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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