A charming slice of cheer.
In this cumulative tale, an apple tree that stands near the house where Rosa lives marks the passing of seasons and the flitting of critters.
Amid a wide patch of grass sits the apple tree, or el manzano, receiving the sun near a squat home adorned with a red roof. The rain, or la lluvia, sustains the tree, and the birds, or los pájaros, piece together a nest in the tree. Rosa’s cat, Dulce, and dog, Churro, cause mischief around the apple tree while bees pollinate the blossoms, which will bloom into small apples that will cling “from branch to branch.” Establishing a deliberate pace from the first line and writing in verse similar to “The House That Jack Built,” Duran chronicles the journey of an apple from flower to fruit with a modest dose of critter-based humor. The author scatters one-word, italicized Spanish translations of key words throughout that prove to be occasional distractions. Fitzgerald’s scruffy artwork replicates the precise rustic sensibility evoked by the text. Lush greens, dabs of oranges and reds, and glimpses of earthy browns combine into portraits of rural serenity. When the apples appear ready to be plucked from the apple tree, Rosa and her family, depicted in varying shades of brown and cued as Latine, gather to bake an apple pie for a picnic that everyone can join. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A charming slice of cheer. (translation of Spanish words, recipe for applesauce) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-63655-061-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Red Comet Press
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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