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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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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)

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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

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by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Jim Valeri

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

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FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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THE DAY THE CRAYONS MADE FRIENDS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2025

Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.

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After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.

Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.

Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)