For places where the first-grade shelves are particularly thin.
The traditional song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” gets a school makeover as readers follow a cheery narrator through the first 12 days of first grade.
“On the first day of first grade / I had fun right away // laughing and learning all day!” In these first two spreads, Jennings shows the child, who has brown skin and a cloud of dark-brown hair, entering the schoolyard with a diverse array of classmates and settling in. In the backgrounds, caregivers, including a woman in hijab, stand at the fence and kids hang things on hooks in the back of the room. Each new day sees the child and their friends enjoying new things, previous days’ activities repeated in the verses each time so that those listening will soon be chiming in. The child helps in the classroom, checks out books from the library, plants seeds, practices telling time and counting money, leads the line, performs in a play, shows off a picture of their pet bunny, and does activities in gym, music, and art classes. The Photoshop-and-watercolor illustrations portray adorable and engaged kids having fun while learning with friends. But while the song and topic are the same, this doesn’t come close to touching either the hysterical visuals or great rhythm of Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003).
For places where the first-grade shelves are particularly thin. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-266851-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A humorous, meandering approach to a life lesson about leading every day with benevolence.
To the consternation of the other six days of the week, Sunday quits in protest, tired of being unappreciated for her consistent delivery of a weekly “beautiful free day.”
Sunday’s abrupt decision prompts the others to look for her replacement with an advertisement inviting auditions before the remaining six days. The competition quickly grows increasingly fierce as ideas are broached for DogDay, Big-BurpDay, PieDay, Band-AidDay, and, ridiculously, FirepoleSlidingIntoPoolsOfCottonCandyDay. Amid all this boisterous and frenzied rivalry, a little girl approaches the misunderstood Sunday with a small plant to say thank you and to suggest “simply a nice day. A day when people can show more kindness to each other.” The child’s humble gratitude is enough for Sunday to return to her important weekly position and to prompt all the days to value kindness as the key to each day’s possibilities. Bright art captures the mania, with cotton-candy hues representing each of the anthropomorphic days. Though undeniably comical as it unfolds in busy cartoon illustrations and speech balloons, the drawn-out, nonsensical, and unexpected course the narrative takes may be a stretch for youngsters who cannot always distinguish among days. Kindness as the ingredient for achieving a harmonious week is nevertheless a valuable message, however circuitously expressed. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 50% of actual size.)
A humorous, meandering approach to a life lesson about leading every day with benevolence. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-55424-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
The writer and director of the wonderful Pixar animated short attached to Toy Story 3 shows here why he should stick to films. For this print version he uses stills for illustrations and has kept the general plot—Night and Day (rendered as retro, Shmoo-like silhouettes filled with changing sunlit or moonlit scenes that look 3D in the movie but not here) meet, fight, play, bond at dusk and part friends. He has, however, flattened the age appeal by discarding all of the original’s earthier scenes (no ogling of beach babes, for instance, nor even Day’s early-morning pee) and replaced its soundtrack of lively music and sound effects leading up to a few seconds of Wayne Dyer on embracing the mysterious (a clear statement of the episode’s real theme in a nutshell) with trite, superfluous lines like, “And then something magical began to happen…” and, “Now there is something new in me because of you.” Bland, studiously inoffensive and robbed of most of its filmic progenitor’s artistry and humor. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8118-7664-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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