Shines a triumphant spotlight on Day of the Dead festivities.
A brown-skinned Latine family prepares for and then celebrates the Day of the Dead.
Mar, Paz, and their parents have much to do to get ready to welcome family for the big celebration: getting marigolds and sugar skulls at the market, making almond cookies, and writing poems. There are special revelations about ways in which the children are like their grandfather and great-grandmother as well as singing and dancing. At the heart of it all, Abuelita is greeted joyfully and shares family stories. The illustrations are appropriately brightly colored and show off many of the elements of the Day of the Dead. The special marigolds, skulls, and symbolic monarch butterflies thread across pages, tying the celebration and the living and the dead together. Aranda explains why the holiday matters as well as the importance of learning about and preserving ancestral memories. Her text contains just enough information to be beneficial to young readers without overwhelming them. The nuances of the connections between ancestors and current generations, and between lost loved ones and living ones, are expertly captured. Above all, the story centers on the joys of family and tradition. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Shines a triumphant spotlight on Day of the Dead festivities. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-525-51428-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
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
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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