by You Byun illustrated by You Byun ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 21, 2013
Readers will want to go to sleep right away in hopes of summoning their own dream friends
A little girl’s “dream friend” assuages her loneliness after a family move.
Every night Melody ascends a spiral staircase from her bedroom to her dreams, where she plays with a giant, fluffy white dog sporting a red bow tie. He surprises her “with lovely things,” and they play hide-and-seek and watch fireworks together. But Melody must leave her idyllic dream world during the day, and in the “real world,” she languishes in loneliness on the playground—“she was too shy to talk to the other children.” “Coax[ing]” her dream friend into the real world doesn’t work, but one day on the playground, she imagines dancing with him, attracting the attention of a friendly girl in overalls. “Melody taught her the dance she learned from her friend. Soon everyone on the playground was dancing with them.” While newcomer Byun’s story is a little on the bland and idealized side, her illustrations entrance. Delicate lines and a retro pastel palette create a friendly, surreal dream world and an appealing neighborhood playground filled with a multiethnic cast of chubby-cheeked children. The sequence in which Melody tries to convince her dream friend to come into the world is particularly funny; she sets a trail of cupcakes and tries with main force to squash him through her door, among other stratagems.
Readers will want to go to sleep right away in hopes of summoning their own dream friends . (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25739-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
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by Linda Ashman ; illustrated by You Byun
by Hoda Kotb ; illustrated by Chloe Dominique ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2024
Pleasant enough but not particularly original.
Uplifting messages of positivity from the Today show anchor.
Hope springs eternal, so the saying goes. Kotb agrees, here delivering to children the cheery news that hope lives inside all of them and that whatever they might wish for can be theirs. All they need is a sunny outlook, and the possibilities for happy outcomes are virtually endless. Children’s dreams can be in-the-moment ones—like purple ice cream with whipped cream and a cherry—or more far-ranging ones, such as growing tall enough to reach that high shelf easily or for hair that’s long enough to braid. It doesn’t matter, the author reassures young readers. Your aspirations will be realized, so don’t give up on them—just keep believing in them and, most of all, in yourself. Throughout, Kotb calls hope a rainbow, a feeling, a gift, and a wish. Hope is “new friends you’ll find— / friends who are loving and funny and kind.” Hope is “practicing your heart out, letter by letter.” The book’s overarching theme is upbeat, but its bouncy rhyming text is clumsy. The child-appealing illustrations are colorful and lively, though they have a generic look. The cast of wide-eyed characters is racially diverse; some have visible disabilities.
Pleasant enough but not particularly original. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9780593624128
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Flamingo Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
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by Hoda Kotb ; illustrated by Suzie Mason
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...
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
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings
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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino
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