Kids will have fun following Charlie as he solves the mystery and reinforce their fraction skills along the way
Pizza night brings a mystery, and plenty of math, to the Piechart household.
Charlie’s family of five is joined by his friend Lewis, which means that if they order a large pizza, each of them will get two slices. But can they agree on toppings? Four-sixths want nothing to do with veggies, and no one wants anchovies. Pepperoni it is. But between the pizza’s arrival and its serving, one piece has gone missing. Charlie goes into full detective mode (his dog is even named Watson!) and hunts for clues, then turns to his five suspects…though maybe he should include one more. Comstock and Sadler give readers plenty of exposure to fractions in both written and pie-chart form: fittingly, Charlie’s body is a round pie chart that changes to reflect the math around him. The authors find sneaky ways to seamlessly add more and more fractions to the tale while at the same time upping the humor: Charlie has his sisters do the burp test to see if they are guilty. Debut illustrator Comstock’s digital artwork is a retro-modern throwback, from the red, white, mustard, and turquoise palette to the asterisk designs on the plates and the furniture shapes.
Kids will have fun following Charlie as he solves the mystery and reinforce their fraction skills along the way . (Math picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237054-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A hilarious autumnal comedy of errors.
A confused squirrel overreacts to the falling autumn leaves.
Relaxing on a tree branch, Squirrel admires the red, gold, and orange leaves. Suddenly Squirrel screams, “One of my leaves is…MISSING!” Searching for the leaf, Squirrel tells Bird, “Someone stole my leaf!” Spying Mouse sailing in a leaf boat, Squirrel asks if Mouse stole the leaf. Mouse calmly replies in the negative. Bird reminds Squirrel it’s “perfectly normal to lose a leaf or two at this time of year.” Next morning Squirrel panics again, shrieking, “MORE LEAVES HAVE BEEN STOLEN!” Noticing Woodpecker arranging colorful leaves, Squirrel queries, “Are those my leaves?” Woodpecker tells Squirrel, “No.” Again, Bird assures Squirrel that no one’s taking the leaves and that the same thing happened last year, then encourages Squirrel to relax. Too wired to relax despite some yoga and a bath, the next day Squirrel cries “DISASTER” at the sight of bare branches. Frantic now, Squirrel becomes suspicious upon discovering Bird decorating with multicolored leaves. Is Bird the culprit? In response, Bird shows Squirrel the real Leaf Thief: the wind. Squirrel’s wildly dramatic, misguided, and hyperpossessive reaction to a routine seasonal event becomes a rib-tickling farce through clever use of varying type sizes and weights emphasizing his absurd verbal pronouncements as well as exaggerated, comic facial expressions and body language. Bold colors, arresting perspectives, and intense close-ups enhance Squirrel’s histrionics. Endnotes explain the science behind the phenomenon.
A hilarious autumnal comedy of errors. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-3520-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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