Lovely to gaze upon and offering characters with promise, but the story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Nam presents a fleeting, exotic introduction to the invention of coinage.
Young Laos lives in Sardis in the ancient kingdom of Lydia (today’s western Turkey), nearby the river of gold: Pactolus. Laos comes from a family of traders and goldsmiths, the gold panned in plenty from the sands of the Pactolus River. Indeed, so bountiful is the Pactolus that the legend of King Midas was minted along its banks. As the city is a great marketplace, the people of Sardis understand the vexations of barter as a system of exchange. Laos is drawn by Sforza with pale skin, a shock of black hair, and glistening eyes, his elders bearded (some bald, others hatted, few women), with settings that capture the feeling of ancient wall murals. He relays that the merchants need to simplify their transactions: it needs to be something light that won’t rot. Maybe gold or silver? They send these ideas to the king for consideration. The king creates a coin stamped with the titular lion and declares it currency. That’s rather neat and tidy, a gold mine for “how”s and “why”s of the dismal science that are left unanswered. A long supplementary author’s note testifies to the story’s lacunae.
Lovely to gaze upon and offering characters with promise, but the story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. (glossary, timeline) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5475-9
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Eerdmans
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2017
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
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