Creepy and uncomfortable—rather like discovering that a spider is riding on your head.
A rabbit and a spider engage in a strange adventure.
An unsuspecting rabbit is happily going about his business when he enters a kind of tunnel and discovers a spider, which promptly attaches itself to him. He runs, jumps, and yells, but nothing can dislodge it. Exhausted, the rabbit rests while the spider bides its time. When the rabbit wakes, he pays court to a lovely lady rabbit (so identified by eyelashes and wrist bangles), who, unknowingly, carries a spider of her own. Seeing the two spiders, they run away in panic, at which point the spiders get together gleefully. A curious bird and a dragonfly lurk nearby and watch all the action dispassionately. Various spellings of “Ah” provide most of the text, alternately expressing panic, satisfaction, or contentment. The spiders utter the only sentence, “How silly they are,” while laughing merrily at the rabbits’ fear and their own happy ending. The creatures are rendered in black line cartoon drawings with splashes of color in the secondary characters and in flowers and a rainbow. There is constant movement across the double-page spreads as the characters meet, separate, and meet again, but very young readers may have difficulty in following or understanding the plot. The underlying mood is rather nasty; the spiders are bullies who succeed at the rabbits’ expenses, while the bystanders do nothing.
Creepy and uncomfortable—rather like discovering that a spider is riding on your head. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3199-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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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