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SALAD PIE

Name: SALAD PIE
Author: Wendy BooydeGraaff
ISBN: 978-0-9913866-4-2

by Wendy BooydeGraaff ; illustrated by Bryan Langdo ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016

Warm and winning.

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The park is the perfect place for culinary imagination—and friendship.

Maggie’s pleased that the park is empty and quiet, perfect for making Salad Pie. Then Herbert appears and asks what she’s doing. The park’s no longer empty or quiet. Still, she goes ahead with her plan. As Herbert watches, she walks in a wide arc around him, gathering stems of clover, dandelion leaves, some soft crab apples. She mixes them in her floppy hat, then tosses in some wood chips. A few fall out onto the ground, and Herbert scurries to pick them up. He tries to drop them back into the salad, and Maggie grabs his wrist to make sure he doesn’t touch. But she accepts the pieces. “Magnificent,” she declares, then climbs the slide, up up up and, at the very top, starts to sing and dance. When she loses her footing, she and her Salad Pie take a tumble, but Herbert is there to catch her and all the flying pieces. This time she lets him help. The missteps in BooydeGraaff’s tale of budding friendship make it all the more interesting and believable. Langdo’s watercolors bring character to the forefront; Maggie has light-brown skin and a wild mop of springy brown hair, while Herbert is a leggy white boy with short brown hair.

Warm and winning. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: March 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-9913866-4-2

Page Count: 44

Publisher: Ripple Grove

Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK LOST AND FOUND

From the Little Blue Truck series

by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 2026

Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed.

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Beep! Beep! Beep! Toad and Little Blue Truck get ready for a hayride.

After the titular vehicle is loaded with hay, Toad is nowhere to be found. “Beep! Beep! Beep! Where are you, Toad?” asks Little Blue Truck. All the barnyard animals look for him. Sheep searches the meadow. Goose and Duck check the pond. Others pitch in, too, but Toad seems to have disappeared…until Hen hears snoring coming from the pile of hay in the back of Little Blue Truck. Although the text’s scansion is imperfect in places (adults may want to pre-read to ensure a smooth read-aloud), the bouncy meter and rhyming text nevertheless capture the energy of the search and the farmyard community’s concern for Toad’s safety, making this a solid storytime choice. Eye-catching illustrations with rich, fully saturated colors balance the right level of detail while still highlighting the animal that is the focus of each verse. By introducing one farm animal at a time, Schertle also helps the youngest readers begin to identify barnyard animals by name and understand their unique farm homes. Traditional animal sounds are part of the text, and listeners will add them to their vocabulary. It all ends with the promised hayride, bringing the tale to a joyous ending.

Fun times, fond friends, and a festive farmyard setting—little ones will be charmed. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026

ISBN: 9780063436121

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 20, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BLUE TRUCK AND RACER RED
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry

- BOOK REVIEW
LITTLE BLUE TRUCK MAKES A FRIEND
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry

- BOOK REVIEW
TIME FOR SCHOOL, LITTLE BLUE TRUCK
by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by John Joseph

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)