Important, beautiful, and full of heart.
With a pep talk from his shadow, a young black boy learns to wear his “game face” and give his all at the neighborhood basketball court.
The boy is at the barber shop when his shadow calls to him from outside, “It’s game day!” He arrives at the fenced-in basketball court, where other kids greet one another. His shadow tells him, “Time to put your game face on!” It takes a few tries—a smile, a frown, and finally, a mean mug. Now that the boy’s got his game face on, his shadow says, “show me what you know.” In rhythmic verse like a bouncing ball, the boy plays: “In. Out. / I cross ’em. / Ankles. / I break ’em.” The boy is all over the court, his face sometimes hard and sometimes not so sure. Finally, boy and shadow float below the hoop as the ball goes in. “We won!” After a bit more coaching (“Work hard.…Don’t quit”) and a promise to “never give up,” the boy brings his game face to the whole group of kids, declaring, “We. GOT. NEXT.” The inner-city neighborhood is lovingly portrayed, with soft watercolors creating swaths of concrete and sky, spare natural elements, and the black of the broken chain-link fence echoed in the black of the shadow that gets the boy psyched. A vibrant mural on the endpapers pays tribute to black leaders and community.
Important, beautiful, and full of heart. (Picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-265777-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists.
How to raise money for a coveted poster: put your friends to work!
John, founder of the FUBU fashion line and a Shark Tank venture capitalist, offers a self-referential blueprint for financial success. Having only half of the $10 he needs for a Minka J poster, Daymond forks over $1 to buy a plain T-shirt, paints a picture of the pop star on it, sells it for $5, and uses all of his cash to buy nine more shirts. Then he recruits three friends to decorate them with his design and help sell them for an unspecified amount (from a conveniently free and empty street-fair booth) until they’re gone. The enterprising entrepreneur reimburses himself for the shirts and splits the remaining proceeds, which leaves him with enough for that poster as well as a “brand-new business book,” while his friends express other fiscal strategies: saving their share, spending it all on new art supplies, or donating part and buying a (math) book with the rest. (In a closing summation, the author also suggests investing in stocks, bonds, or cryptocurrency.) Though Miles cranks up the visual energy in her sparsely detailed illustrations by incorporating bright colors and lots of greenbacks, the actual advice feels a bit vague. Daymond is Black; most of the cast are people of color. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
It’s hard to argue with success, but guides that actually do the math will be more useful to budding capitalists. (Picture book. 7-9)Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-56727-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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
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