Readers will eagerly saddle up for this enchanting ride.
An aspiring equestrian learns what horsemanship is really like.
Frances is visiting her friend Mae, who has a stable, for her first riding lesson. She fantasizes about clearing obstacles while atop a noble steed like her favorite toy horse, Excalibur—only to meet an adorably round, filthy horse named Snowball. As Mae gives her a grounding in horse care, Frances discovers that the realities of horsemanship aren’t quite as glamorous as she had anticipated: She notices Mae’s mother mucking out the stables, and horse care entails scraping the dirt out of Snowball’s hooves. When it’s finally time to mount Snowball, she’s a bit nervous. But Mae eases her into things by joining her for a tandem ride. Frances is finally ready for a solo ride, and she ends her visit eager for her next lesson and still daydreaming about riding—though now fantasizing about a considerably rounder mount. While this title isn’t a sequel to Mann’s The Camping Trip (2020), the books share the same reader-friendly text and deceptively simple artwork. Divided into graphic novel–esque panels, whimsically childlike, loose-lined illustrations, rendered in an appropriately muddy palette, offer accurate depictions of equipment. Mann captures the flavor of stable life as she infuses the narrative with well-chosen details, such as the clouds of dirt and horse hair knocked loose as the girls brush Snowball. Frances is light-skinned; Mae and her mother are brown-skinned.
Readers will eagerly saddle up for this enchanting ride. (Picture book. 5-10)Pub Date: June 17, 2025
ISBN: 9781536235265
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that.
Beatrice Zinker is a kinder, gentler Judy Moody.
Beatrice doesn’t want to be fit in a box. Her first word was “WOW,” not “Mom.” She does her best thinking upside down and prefers to dress like a ninja. Like Judy Moody, she has patient parents and a somewhat annoying younger brother. (She also has a perfectly ordinary older sister.) Beatrice spends all summer planning a top-secret spy operation complete with secret codes and a secret language (pig Latin). But on the first day of third grade, her best friend, Lenny (short for Eleanor), shows up in a dress, with a new friend who wants to play veterinarian at recess. Beatrice, essentially a kind if somewhat quirky kid, struggles to see the upside of the situation and ends up with two friends instead of one. Line drawings on almost every spread add to the humor and make the book accessible to readers who might otherwise balk at its 160 pages. Thankfully, the rhymes in the text do not continue past the first chapter. Children will enjoy the frequent puns and Beatrice’s preference for climbing trees and hanging upside down. The story drifts dangerously close to pedantry when Beatrice asks for advice from a grandmotherly neighbor but is saved by likable characters and upside-down cake. Beatrice seems to be white; Lenny’s surname, Santos, suggests that she may be Latina; their school is a diverse one.
A kind child in a book for middle-grade readers? There’s no downside to that. (Fiction. 6-10)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4847-6738-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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