An inventive and empowering read-aloud about careers that should inspire preschoolers.
Careers and the qualities they represent are explored in this debut picture book’s take on the traditional question “What will you be when you grow up?”
On each page of this work, children are encouraged to envision their futures as filled with endless possibilities. In each of the rhythmic stanzas, the narrator repeats the final word in the first three lines (for example, dreams on the opening page) and asks who might embody the actions or qualities mentioned. Then the narrator follows with a command (“Believe,” “Blast off,” “Create”) and the phrase “It could be you!” The second line in most stanzas offers a job title: astronaut, artist, athlete, trucker, and more. But while the various careers will interest young readers, the key features of those occupations—their qualities of resilience and creativity—should capture their imaginations (“Who has keen-design flair, / an artist’s time-to-shine flair, / a sketch-and-then-refine flair? / Create. It could be you!”). Schrauben’s firm beat and repeated phrases allow young lap readers to chime in with adults reading aloud. Veteran illustrator Seal’s soft-edged, cartoonish paintings show a diverse group of children and adults interacting in natural and urban environments. Inclusivity is emphasized throughout, especially on the athlete page, which depicts a wheelchair race. By looking at the careers’ positive traits and phrasing the rhymes to support a “growth mindset” and flexible thinking, the author breathes fresh life into a familiar theme.
An inventive and empowering read-aloud about careers that should inspire preschoolers.Pub Date: April 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73534-513-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cardinal Rule Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
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