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THE QUIET ONE

Name: THE QUIET ONE
Author: Yiting Lee
ISBN: 9780802856418

by Yiting Lee ; illustrated by Yiting Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 4, 2025

A reminder that there’s a spark inside every one of us.

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A shy girl dreads an upcoming school presentation but, with a little help, finds her voice.

Milly is the “quiet one” in class, secluded in the corner with a book. She worries about show and tell next Friday—what if she doesn’t have anything to say? At home, she hides out in her family’s junk shed, creating wondrous inventions from old things. One day she repairs a broken robot vacuum. Milly uses her tools and some spare parts to add wheels, appendages, and other frills to the gray, blocky, droidlike figure, and when she turns it on, it opens its eyes and introduces itself as Arnold. At last, Milly has a friend, and she begins to share her ideas with her creation; together, they build a spectacular playground out of found items. Friday arrives, and Lee cleverly depicts the audience as huge and looming figures several times Milly’s size. Milly’s fear is palpable, and she freezes up. But Arnold comes to the rescue, and before she knows it, Milly is swept up, enthusiastically describing how she made Arnold. Watercolor and colored pencil artwork dominated by earthy tones create a warm, childlike look and convey the underlying message that humble appearances can contain great depth and creativity. Milly has paper-white skin and dark hair; her classmates vary in skin tone.

A reminder that there’s a spark inside every one of us. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: March 4, 2025

ISBN: 9780802856418

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Eerdmans

Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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by Swapna Haddow ; illustrated by Yiting Lee

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WHAT'S THE RUSH?
by Yiting Lee ; illustrated by Yiting Lee

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SPAGHETTI HEAD & CHICKEN FINGERS

by Rhett McLaughlin & Link Neal ; illustrated by Erica Salcedo ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2026

Wild and wacky.

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A picture book from the comedy duo known as Rhett & Link, creators of the online juggernaut Good Mythical Morning.

Lumo is obsessed with chicken fingers; Saffy, who is new to town and anxious about starting school, finds comfort in the only food she likes: buttered spaghetti. The night before the first day of school, a thunderstorm rages, and each kid makes a wish—“to have chicken fingers at school,” in Lumo’s case; Saffy wishes for “the first thing off the top of her head: buttered spaghetti.” File under “Be careful what you wish for.” Lumo’s and Saffy’s respective physical changes (chicken fingers for fingers, spaghetti for hair) make navigating school a challenge but bring them together in the cafeteria, where they enjoy some new foods—and their new friendship. The plotting could have been sharper: Why do the kids’ bodies suddenly return to normal? And couldn’t the authors have thought up a less old-hat story-ending punch line? Nevertheless, McLaughlin and Neal get by on their charm, and the plot sets up some funny visuals. Salcedo’s cartoony Photoshop art features well-chosen artifacts from a typical kid’s life and captures the mortification of not fitting in, which will be familiar even to readers who have never experienced breaded fingers or noodle hair. Lumo is brown-skinned and dark-haired; Saffy is pale-skinned with disheveled reddish-brown hair.

Wild and wacky. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: June 16, 2026

ISBN: 9780063474154

Page Count: 32

Publisher: HarperPop/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: March 23, 2026

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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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)