Lively and lovely.
A friendship is formed, nearly lost, and re-established on a long train journey.
When blonde Molly and brunette Mae, both white, meet on the platform of a railroad station, they immediately connect. They play hide-and-seek, blow bubbles, and dance. When they board the train, they continue to play, sometimes getting rambunctious and annoying other passengers. All that closeness inevitably leads to conflict, and they turn away from each other as the train zooms through the timeless, vast, rural countryside. They cautiously restart the friendly atmosphere and enjoy the remainder of the trip together. Through all the action the girls’ moms (also both white) are vague and passive, barely visible. Energetic language in the form of clipped, action-filled sentences announce the children’s activities, and Parker further enhances the simple tale with lovely descriptions of the sights outside the train’s windows. The inventive format uses railway-signage iconography to situate readers as the book progresses, beginning on the platform of their starting point. There's a timetable of the girls’ games until boarding, and their argument is denoted as a signal failure. The illustrations employ windows and bridges—literal and figurative—as visual metaphors, keeping a comfortable rhythm until the girls reach their unnamed city destination. Blackwood’s softly hued illustrations, outlined in feathery, light-brown lines, fully illuminate the events with details only suggested in the text. Molly and Mae display every emotion with subtle changes of expression and body language.
Lively and lovely. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-328-71543-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his...
It’s a wonderful day in the jungle, so why’s Jim Panzee so grumpy?
When Jim woke up, nothing was right: "The sun was too bright, the sky was too blue, and bananas were too sweet." Norman the gorilla asks Jim why he’s so grumpy, and Jim insists he’s not. They meet Marabou, to whom Norman confides that Jim’s grumpy. When Jim denies it again, Marabou points out that Jim’s shoulders are hunched; Jim stands up. When they meet Lemur, Lemur points out Jim’s bunchy eyebrows; Jim unbunches them. When he trips over Snake, Snake points out Jim’s frown…so Jim puts on a grimacelike smile. Everyone has suggestions to brighten his mood: dancing, singing, swinging, swimming…but Jim doesn’t feel like any of that. He gets so fed up, he yells at his animal friends and stomps off…then he feels sad about yelling. He and Norman (who regrets dancing with that porcupine) finally just have a sit and decide it’s a wonderful day to be grumpy—which, of course, makes them both feel a little better. Suzanne Lang’s encouragement to sit with your emotions (thus allowing them to pass) is nearly Buddhist in its take, and it will be great bibliotherapy for the crabby, cranky, and cross. Oscar-nominated animator Max Lang’s cartoony illustrations lighten the mood without making light of Jim’s mood; Jim has comically long arms, and his facial expressions are quite funny.
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his journey. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-53786-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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