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ALL BODIES ARE GOOD BODIES

Name: ALL BODIES ARE GOOD BODIES
Author: Charlotte Barkla
ISBN: 978-1-76050-393-2

by Charlotte Barkla ; illustrated by Erica Salcedo ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2021

All bodies are absolutely good bodies; unfortunately, not all books on the subject are.

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Told in rhyme, this book celebrates body parts such as hands, eyes, and noses.

“I love hands. Hands that are white and hands that are brown. / Freckles mean sunshine has sent kisses down,” begins this simple story of body acceptance. Barkla’s well-meaning effort describes a range of body parts and offers examples of how they might appear. Children with a variety of skin tones, hair textures, facial expressions, and racial presentations fill alternating pages. Though an effort is made to uplift marginalized attributes, the messaging is shallow and keeps conventional characteristics squarely in the center. Illustrator Salcedo’s art places a White-presenting child with mostly normative features as the protagonist, with non-normative bodies coming across as an afterthought. For example, in the spread celebrating “giant legs, tiny legs, hairy or smooth,” Barkla writes that “some legs are really quick, others don’t move.” An accompanying image shows a yoga-posing child wearing a prosthetic leg; as the joints reveal, the leg is certainly in motion. Meanwhile, of the five other kids rendered in the spread, four are slender and pale-skinned; the child who uses a wheelchair elsewhere in the book is nowhere to be seen. Readers looking for an accessible, body-positive picture book will find Tyler Feder’s Bodies Are Cool (2021) to be an excellent choice. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

All bodies are absolutely good bodies; unfortunately, not all books on the subject are. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: July 1, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-76050-393-2

Page Count: 24

Publisher: Little Hare/Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS

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CHICKA CHICKA HO HO HO

From the Chicka Chicka Book series

by William Boniface ; illustrated by Julien Chung ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2024

A successful swap from coconut tree to Christmas tree.

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A Christmas edition of the beloved alphabet book.

The story starts off nearly identically to Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989), written by John Archambault and the late Bill Martin Jr, with the letters A, B, and C deciding to meet in the branches of a tree. This time, they’re attempting to scale a Christmas tree, not a coconut tree, and the letters are strung together like garland. A, B, and C are joined by the other letters, and of course they all “slip, slop, topple, plop!” right down the tree. At the bottom, they discover an assortment of gifts, all in a variety of shapes. As a team, the letters and presents organize themselves to get back up on the Christmas tree and get a star to the top. Holiday iterations of favorite tales often fall flat, but this take succeeds. The gifts are an easy way to reinforce another preschool concept—shapes—and the text uses just enough of the original to be familiar. The rhyming works, sticking to the cadence of the source material. The illustrations pay homage to the late Lois Ehlert’s, featuring the same bold block letters, though they lack some of the whimsy and personality of the original. Otherwise, everything is similarly brightly colored and simply drawn. Those familiar with the classic will be drawn to this one, but newcomers can enjoy it on its own.

A successful swap from coconut tree to Christmas tree. (Picture book. 3-5)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024

ISBN: 9781665954761

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: July 4, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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)