For fairy-tale lovers, this appealing story adds a dash of magic to the night sky.
A Master-in-Training accidentally creates his greatest invention in this picture book that offers an original folktale.
Sam is an assistant to the Master, helping the wizened older man create Earth from a castle in the clouds. But the Master has a problem; during the day, he watches the people of Earth, but the darkness of night makes him miss looking at them. Sam promises to think of something, but the route is circuitous. Sam is the inventor of the Mini Moon, which uses leftover Sun Bits; his wife, Clem, is the creator of the rainbow and designs a sky tapestry for sunrise and sunset. When Sam fashions the Mega Moon to solve the Master’s night vision problem, he’s devastated to realize he’s ripped holes in Clem’s sky weavings. But then the Master shows Sam that the holes have created the stars, calling them “your best invention yet.” This charming tale is light on logic and high on whimsy, and the fairy-tale flavor makes it feel like a much older, familiar story. Davis uses accessible language for independent readers and a comforting tone to encourage nighttime lap reading with an adult. The text switches between present and past tense, which may irk some readers. Xi’s illustrations, featuring an all-White, round-faced cast, are full of fancy, and the depictions of acts of creation—Clem’s rainbow weaving and Sam’s Sun Dust sprinkling—are particularly well done.
For fairy-tale lovers, this appealing story adds a dash of magic to the night sky.Pub Date: May 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-09-836723-7
Page Count: 30
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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