A text-heavy lesson that will resonate with preschool-age readers.
A tiny flame sets off on a journey in Cole’s kitchen-centered picture-book debut.
Little Blue Flame lives with his family under the stovetop. While most of his family is satisfied with staying there, Little Blue longs for adventure even though he often feels small. One morning, he sets off to explore the stovetop. When he encounters a piece of macaroni named Mac, he tries to help his new pal get unstuck—but instead, Little Blue falls from the stovetop to a dingy, dirty land under the stove. After a pep talk from an ant, who says, “even though you’re small, I bet you could figure out a way to help me get you back to the top,” Little Blue uses a string and a spoon to devise a way to get home—and help Mac in the process. Very young readers, who often feel too physically slight to accomplish their goals, will be reassured by this book’s message of using creativity to solve problems. Although no STEM-related terminology is used, the idea of using a lever as a force multiplier reinforces a basic simple-machine concept. Turner’s cheerful cartoon illustrations manage to make stove flames and kitchen waste seem like reasonable characters despite the overall suspension of disbelief required for the tale to work.
A text-heavy lesson that will resonate with preschool-age readers.Pub Date: June 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61244-821-3
Page Count: 28
Publisher: Halo Publishing International
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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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