This sweet story makes a good springboard for vocabulary-enrichment activities in and out of the classroom.
With the help of her beloved dog, a girl composes a story on a word-filled jaunt to the park.
Tulip and Rex each receive gifts from Grandma: a notebook for Tulip, a leash for the dog. Together they head to the park with their new possessions. Fun- and dance-loving Tulip, with Rex’s nudging, decides to make it a “word walk”; that is, she jots in her notebook words that describe her and Rex’s actions; objects or phenomena they notice; or words that describe them. The addition of the words “brave” and “kind,” prompted by Rex’s rescue of Tulip (and the notebook) from the park’s stream, inspires Tulip to devise an imaginative story (despite the title, Tulip tells, rather than writes), starring herself and Rex, using all the words she’s written. Garbed in dress-up items they selected before leaving home, dog and girl act out a royal drama in Massini’s lively, colorful digital illustrations, which are full of expressiveness, personality, and cheer. Readers may be disappointed that Tulip’s story never actually concludes, since, at a crucial moment in the telling, her parents call their daughter and pet to a picnic lunch, leaving the ending literally up in the air. They’ll be even more let down by the book’s flat ending but will hopefully be encouraged to go on word walks of their own and develop stories based on them.
This sweet story makes a good springboard for vocabulary-enrichment activities in and out of the classroom. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-209416-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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