Celebrating kids, art, and supportive communities, this gem deserves a wide audience.
Award-winning illustrator Taylor honors artistic expression and community support for street art in his authorial debut.
Narrator Sam moves cross-country with Mom and Dad, trading their beloved, pulsing city for a small, quiet town. Sam feels like an outsider “from another planet” at school, “ready to take the first spacecraft home.” A downtown encounter with gorgeous graffiti on a wall that spells out “EXPAND!!!” wows Sam, evoking the vibrancy of the city. But when Sam and older cousin Lincoln return, they find the wall painted over. Lincoln knows that street art hides all over town, though: “tags in the alley, stickers on street signs, stencils on the corner,” and more. “You just have to know where to look!” The pair then discover something extraordinary: an abandoned factory, alive with diverse graffiti artists transforming its interior walls. Sam, approaching a busy mother-daughter team, learns that the town has sanctioned the venue for rehabilitation as a community art space. Invited, Sam dons a respirator and gets to work. Final pages reveal the protagonist’s giant self-portrait as an astronaut against the word HOME, extending the theme of artistic and personal expansion. Taylor’s vibrant, explosive illustrations vividly capture street art’s dynamism in a palette with purple and gold highlights. He encodes messages of positivity into the graffiti—“XPLORE,” “HOPE”—as well as names and personal references. Sam, Lincoln, and Sam’s parents are Black; the mother and daughter Sam meets are light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Celebrating kids, art, and supportive communities, this gem deserves a wide audience. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-62672-294-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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