Even with its design flaws, the book remains a good choice for bilingual storytimes and conversations about color.
Following Opuestos (2009), Weill introduces colors with mixed success in the latest book in her bilingual First Concepts with Mexican Folk Art series.
Using animals handcrafted by Oaxacan artisans, the author showcases 14 different colors, from typical primary and secondary colors to neutrals and metallics. The book presents young readers to a few colors (such as turquoise, gray, gold and silver) not found in most color concept books. Two pages are dedicated to each color; English and Spanish words for the color are on the left page, faced by one or more animal artworks on the opposite. Made from wood, ceramic, tin or papier-mâché, the featured animals range from ordinary giraffes and polar bears to fantastical winged creatures. While the folk art in the other books in the series popped from pages of contrasting colors, the animals here fade into backgrounds too similar to their representative colors. In some cases, this design decision merely lessens the beauty of the unique, colorful objects. In other instances, the various tints and shades may confuse young readers; purple wooden rabbits look almost black, and a band of ceramic animal musicians appear tan on their brown page. The last page presents a gorgeous pair of multicolored pigs.
Even with its design flaws, the book remains a good choice for bilingual storytimes and conversations about color. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-933693-82-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
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
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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