A gentle tale that is as sweet and delicious as maple syrup.
Time crawls for Ethan as he anxiously awaits the beginning of sugaring season.
Sunday should mean maple syrup on any breakfast his dad cooks. But the maple syrup is used up, and sugaring time won’t happen until the days lengthen. Is the sunny day just a little warmer? Is that a sliver of daylight at bedtime? Or is it only wishful thinking? Dad also says his new loose tooth will fall out when the sap runs. The days creep by, and it’s still cold and dark, and his tooth is still there. Then, finally, the tooth is out, and his father is waiting after school to begin the sugaring process. They work together as a team during the whole process of lifting, carrying, boiling, and pouring to make the longed-for syrup. That first slightly lighter Sunday morning and a breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup are blissful. Young readers will relate to Ethan’s impatience with the slow march from winter to spring, as they hope and wait along with him, even if they are used to the faster pace of city or suburbia. Karas’ illustrations beautifully depict both the wintry farm in day and night and the loving, trusting father-and-son team as they share everyday moments and work together contentedly. Ethan and Dad present white.
A gentle tale that is as sweet and delicious as maple syrup. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-78581-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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