An entrancingly designed alphabet book that will keep young (and old) peering at and poring over it for a long time. There are no words (except at the end), just the letters of the alphabet. Some get one page, some two, some share. For each, a detailed montage in grisaille is full of objects and activities that begin with the featured letter. Each page also has superimposed on it a full-color figure in the shape of its namesake: G, for example, is a golfer, with his swinging club and the green grass forming a clearly defined letter. Along the bottom of each page, two mice scamper. One has a cart of letters, which he places along the bottom so the alphabet grows as the pages proceed. The mouse’s antics reflect the letter: he juggles the letter J, kicks the letter K, and for N, he takes a nap. His companion mouse is usually within the picture somewhere: lodged in the hat of the quartet for Q, driving the toy train with an engineer’s cap on his head for T. The style is exaggerated and obsessively detailed, and it is hard not to be amused by one or another of the mice (that’s one turning a cartwheel on C). The last page lists all the words illustrated on each page that begin with its letter—and they aren’t just nouns, which is an added plus. O for original and offbeat. (Alphabet picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2613-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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 charming, colorful counting tale of ten little fish runs full-circle. Although the light verse opens and closes with ten fish swimming in a line, page-by-page the line grows shorter as the number of fish diminishes one-by-one. One fish dives down, one gets lost, one hides, and another takes a nap until a single fish remains. Then along comes another fish to form a couple and suddenly a new family of little fish emerges to begin all over. Slick, digitally-created images of brilliant marine flora and fauna give an illusion of underwater depth and silence enhancing the verse’s numerical and theatrical progression. The holistic story bubbles with life’s endless cycle. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63569-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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