An engaging and important lesson on respecting boundaries and being a good listener.
An affectionate heart learns that some friends don’t want to be touched in Ziba and Farzin Forooghian’s picture book.
Kissy the Kissy Heart loves touching to show affection. She gives tickles, hugs, and kisses even when they are not wanted. She touches Claire’s hair and earrings in music class, tickles Donna at swimming lessons, hugs Boba at gymnastics, and kisses Taco on Valentine’s Day, in each case overstepping her friends’ comfort zones. “They tell her she needs to ask permission before doing these things,” explains the narrator. Not wanting to make her friends uncomfortable, Kissy finds new ways to show her affection, including compliments, waves, and high-fives. This approach makes all involved happy. At the conclusion, Kissy gives advice on how to tell someone if their touching makes you uncomfortable. The authors use simple language to make the lesson clear. Preschoolers and early elementary readers still in the process of learning about appropriate touching are well supported by the large font size and bright pictures by Medina. Kissy’s quick understanding may set high expectations for changes in behavior, but the message is clear and admirable. The candy-colored digital illustrations show a variety of foods and drinks as humanlike characters, all in bright colors with shiny black eyes. (Taco charmingly boasts sour cream hair.)
An engaging and important lesson on respecting boundaries and being a good listener.Pub Date: May 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798394862335
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions.
Ellis, known for her illustrations for Colin Meloy’s Wildwood series, here riffs on the concept of “home.”
Shifting among homes mundane and speculative, contemporary and not, Ellis begins and ends with views of her own home and a peek into her studio. She highlights palaces and mansions, but she also takes readers to animal homes and a certain famously folkloric shoe (whose iconic Old Woman manages a passel of multiethnic kids absorbed in daring games). One spread showcases “some folks” who “live on the road”; a band unloads its tour bus in front of a theater marquee. Ellis’ compelling ink and gouache paintings, in a palette of blue-grays, sepia and brick red, depict scenes ranging from mythical, underwater Atlantis to a distant moonscape. Another spread, depicting a garden and large building under connected, transparent domes, invites readers to wonder: “Who in the world lives here? / And why?” (Earth is seen as a distant blue marble.) Some of Ellis’ chosen depictions, oddly juxtaposed and stripped of any historical or cultural context due to the stylized design and spare text, become stereotypical. “Some homes are boats. / Some homes are wigwams.” A sailing ship’s crew seems poised to land near a trio of men clad in breechcloths—otherwise unidentified and unremarked upon.
Visually accomplished but marred by stereotypical cultural depictions. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6529-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
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