A must-have picture book that educates while it thoroughly entertains.
A festive Creole story that will encourage readers to dance, sing, and celebrate Carnival.
Melba’s excitement for Carnival makes it hard for her to sleep the night before. On her way to the festival, she encounters Misyé Francois, who plays steel pan drums and sings a song about a “crazy mannikou.” Melba stops to listen a little too long and misses her bus, and both a mannikou (readers unfamiliar with St. Lucian Creole will recognize this as an opossum from the illustrations) and the drummer follow her to Carnival, as does everyone else she encounters along the way, both human and animal. When Melba nears town, she sees a crowd of brown-skinned St. Lucians dressed in costumes and bright, patterned clothes. Glatt’s stylized illustrations portray most characters with reddish-brown skin, long noses, and rosy cheeks; she paints the tropics in deep greens and bright yellows and the cityscape in an array of bright colors. Melba and friends miss the parade but make their own, delighting bystanders. The backmatter bridges cultural gaps by explaining what Creole is, defining the culturally specific language, and explaining where St. Lucia is and what Carnival celebrates, both historically and now. The author’s note reveals St. Lucian writer Paul’s motivation for creating the book, and Glatt’s illustrator’s note explains her Brazilian experience of Carnival. Glatt’s paint, pencil, and crayon illustrations truly capture the festive spirit of this celebration.
A must-have picture book that educates while it thoroughly entertains. (glossary, maps) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64686-161-3
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
Only for dedicated fans of the series.
When a kid gets the part of the ninja master in the school play, it finally seems to be the right time to tackle the closet monster.
“I spot my monster right away. / He’s practicing his ROAR. / He almost scares me half to death, / but I won’t be scared anymore!” The monster is a large, fluffy poison-green beast with blue hands and feet and face and a fluffy blue-and-green–striped tail. The kid employs a “bag of tricks” to try to catch the monster: in it are a giant wind-up shark, two cans of silly string, and an elaborate cage-and-robot trap. This last works, but with an unexpected result: the monster looks sad. Turns out he was only scaring the boy to wake him up so they could be friends. The monster greets the boy in the usual monster way: he “rips a massive FART!!” that smells like strawberries and lime, and then they go to the monster’s house to meet his parents and play. The final two spreads show the duo getting ready for bed, which is a rather anticlimactic end to what has otherwise been a rambunctious tale. Elkerton’s bright illustrations have a TV-cartoon aesthetic, and his playful beast is never scary. The narrator is depicted with black eyes and hair and pale skin. Wallace’s limping verses are uninspired at best, and the scansion and meter are frequently off.
Only for dedicated fans of the series. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-4894-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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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
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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