Eliza is a conventionally pretty princess with blonde braids, but her mechanical talents and can-do spirit are a refreshing...
A lonely princess named Eliza uses her engineering talents to help Santa’s overwhelmed elves get ready for Christmas toy deliveries.
This substantial, rhyming story introduces Eliza and her protective parents, who live in a huge castle in a remote, snowy kingdom. Eliza, who appears to be 6 or 7, is “brainy and bright,” but she has no friends or social life. She spends her days creating unusual machines, such as an odd-sock sorter and a sock-folding machine. Escaping the castle, Eliza ends up at Santa’s workshop, where the elves are seriously behind in their work. Eliza invents a letter-reading machine, a “robotic gift-picking contraption,” and a present-wrapping machine and makes modifications to Santa’s sleigh. A grateful Santa invites her along on his Christmas Eve flight along with her new posse of elf friends, and Eliza’s parents accept her special talent and build the princess her own workshop. The bouncy text written in rhyming couplets is well-matched by large-format, mixed-media illustrations filled with humorous details and intriguing, complex contraptions of Eliza’s design. The royal family and Santa are white; the charming elves include both males and females as well as elves of color.
Eliza is a conventionally pretty princess with blonde braids, but her mechanical talents and can-do spirit are a refreshing breeze in Princessland. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-7636-9632-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nosy Crow
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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