An inclusive embrace of a brain that was built for building.
A boy struggles to focus on anything other than building things in Hoffman’s picture book.
Marcus is a little boy with a mop of curly black hair and brown skin. He loves to build things with blocks, pencils, library books, sticks, and rope; if Marcus can touch it, he can create something with it. The trouble is, Marcus’ penchant for making towers, bridges, rocket ships, zip lines, and palaces distracts him from doing other important things—like math, spelling, and playing with the other children. Ms. Anderson, Marcus’ teacher, asks the class to design a blueprint for a new school playground. When it’s time to present their designs, everyone shows off their drawings, except for Marcus; he has built a whole marvelous model of a playground. Mello’s digital cartoon illustrations are brightly colored and show Marcus’ myriad of marvels and the materials from which they were cleverly engineered, providing detail for the story. The prose is measured in describing the external world of daily life, but when Marcus gets a new idea, the pace picks up speed: “As he pulled out his pencil, the blocks in the corner caught his attention. // Suddenly, his busy brain shifted. // He got out of his chair, a builder on a mission. // He was inspired!” The story’s conclusion stands out for its celebration of Marcus’ unconventional worldview.
An inclusive embrace of a brain that was built for building.Pub Date: March 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781998751310
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Wishing Star Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 20, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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