A solid entry in the princess genre, elevated by its representation of Korean culture.
This retelling of “The Princess and the Pea” draws from history to imagine a new story about a real monarch from 18th-century Korea, in the midst of the country’s centuries-long Joseon period.
The crown prince’s mother, the queen, will select his bride, and she arranges for her son’s potential wives to undergo three challenges. Young Jeongsoon is a bit awkward and clumsy, but she’s long dreamed of being a princess—and bringing aid to the hungry children of her village. When she’s invited to compete, she’s thrilled. She falters during the Manners Test but advances to the Wisdom Test. Her sincere response pleases the queen, and Jeongsoon alone is selected for the final challenge, the Sleep Test. Here, Cho replaces the familiar pea with a single grain of rice and adds a sweet little mouse to further complicate matters. Jang’s vibrant digital art depicts lush palace grounds, richly colored hanboks, and a royal wedding befitting a princess, all while firmly anchoring the story in Korean history. Young readers will delight in seeing Jeongsoon prevail; her triumph will feel especially poignant for those who share her cultural background. While Cho doesn’t interrogate the concept of arranged marriages or the age gap between the real-life Queen Jeongsoon and King Yeongjo (she was a young teen, while he was 64), she does emphasize that it is Jeongsoon’s inner beauty, warmth, and wisdom that make her fit to be a monarch.
A solid entry in the princess genre, elevated by its representation of Korean culture. (author’s note, information on the true story, photographs of the author and her family visiting Queen Jeongsoon’s burial site) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780374392253
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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
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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