A powerful, multilayered depiction of an increasingly common situation.
In Pulitzer Prize–winning Nguyen’s latest, a Vietnamese American girl and her mother evacuate their home.
Má wakes Simone from a dream, depicted in vibrant color, into a nighttime scene, portrayed in grayscale; the only color is a menacing orange outside their window, cresting the ridge beyond their street: “Fire!” Simone chooses important items to take, her crayons and drawings standing out in rainbow hues, and soon they’re in their car. Simone sees firefighters in bright yellow as well as prisoners in orange from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, all working to extinguish the blaze. Má explains that when she was Simone’s age, her home in Vietnam was flooded. The two arrive at a shelter in a school gym, where Simone sees an opportunity to use her crayons to help the other scared children. Panels in varying shapes and sizes outlined by negative space give the narration a comic book–like structure, and dialogue primarily appears in speech bubbles. Stunning illustrations, rendered in graphite, colored pencil, and watercolor, are soft, focusing less on the characters’ fear and more on community and cooperation in the face of disaster. Afterward, Simone returns home having made new friends and armed with the knowledge that everyone is capable of being a helper. In a closing note, Nguyen and Phan discuss the 2020 California wildfires and their impact on San Jose’s Vietnamese American population.
A powerful, multilayered depiction of an increasingly common situation. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9781662651199
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Minerva/Astra Books for Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
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
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones.
Not even the arrival of autumn can cool down this impetuous squirrel.
Although Squirrel is skeptical about Bird’s vegetable patch (“Nothing is HAPPENING!”), Bird does produce five (count them) lovely pumpkins. Squirrel picks out a favorite: “The enormous orange one.” Bird hints that Squirrel might want to help out; Squirrel sets out to fetch some work gloves and returns to find only four pumpkins. The frequently distracted Squirrel notices more gourds disappearing and leaps to the conclusion that a thief is near. And where’s Bird?! Has Squirrel’s pal also been taken? Diligently detecting, Squirrel finds clues—peck marks, footprints, and more—and produces a sketch of the suspect. As readers will guess, each clue turns out to point to one of Squirrel and Bird’s friends. Turns out Bird was delivering pumpkins to their pals while saving the big one to give to “my very best friend,” Squirrel. But why does Squirrel haul it up a tree? “So the Pumpkin Thief can’t find it, of course!” A page of pumpkin facts provides the learning component common to all titles in this series. Once more, readers will enjoy the pleasure of prediction and repetition, Squirrel’s silly persistence, Bird’s generosity, and the vibrant color illustrations, balancing orange with green.
More fun antics to satisfy returning fans and snag new ones. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: July 28, 2026
ISBN: 9781464268076
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2026
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