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HENRY AND BEA

Name: HENRY AND BEA
Author: Jessixa Bagley
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4284-3

by Jessixa Bagley ; illustrated by Jessixa Bagley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 8, 2019

An excellent choice for themes of friendship and trust.

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Henry stops speaking to his best friend, Bea, but Bea is still there for him when he needs a friend.

Henry and Bea understand each other, and that’s why they are best friends. They always have fun together and are pictured reading inside a tent, playing hide-and-seek, sharing a cookie, and watching the clouds. Then one day, Henry seems “quiet and sad.” He wants to be alone, and even an announcement about a field trip to a farm doesn’t make him excited. At the farm, though, Bea gently offers her company to Henry. Finally, when they are alone, Henry reveals that his beloved cat died. Bea sits with him as he cries and helps him say goodbye to his friend. When they rejoin the group in order to take shelter from a storm, Bea implicitly understands that she shouldn’t tell anyone about what he shared. On the final picture, a rainbow peeks through the storm clouds as the friends share cookies once more. Bagley’s artwork creates an emotionally resonant experience, with the use of white space, perspective, and the expanse of the double-page spread to communicate emotional closeness, distance, and isolation. Readers will be invested in this simple, elegantly told tale and will not be disappointed at its conclusion. Henry is white, Bea is brown, and their classmates are fairly diverse.

An excellent choice for themes of friendship and trust. (Picture book. 4-8)

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-8234-4284-3

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

Categories:

CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
DUEL
by Jessixa Bagley ; illustrated by Aaron Bagley

- BOOK REVIEW
MAURICE
by Jessixa Bagley ; illustrated by Jessixa Bagley

- BOOK REVIEW
DAISY
by Jessixa Bagley ; illustrated by Jessixa Bagley

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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IMANI'S MOON

by JaNay Brown-Wood ; illustrated by Hazel Mitchell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 14, 2014

While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child...

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Imani endures the insults heaped upon her by the other village children, but she never gives up her dreams.

The Masai girl is tiny compared to the other children, but she is full of imagination and perseverance. Luckily, she has a mother who believes in her and tells her stories that will fuel that imagination. Mama tells her about the moon goddess, Olapa, who wins over the sun god. She tells Imani about Anansi, the trickster spider who vanquishes a larger snake. (Troublingly, the fact that Anansi is a West African figure, not of the Masai, goes unaddressed in both text and author’s note.) Inspired, the tiny girl tries to find new ways to achieve her dream: to touch the moon. One day, after crashing to the ground yet again when her leafy wings fail, she is ready to forget her hopes. That night, she witnesses the adumu, the special warriors’ jumping dance. Imani wakes the next morning, determined to jump to the moon. After jumping all day, she reaches the moon, meets Olapa and receives a special present from the goddess, a small moon rock. Now she becomes the storyteller when she relates her adventure to Mama. The watercolor-and-graphite illustrations have been enhanced digitally, and the night scenes of storytelling and fantasy with their glowing stars and moons have a more powerful impact than the daytime scenes, with their blander colors.

While the blend of folklore, fantasy and realism is certainly far-fetched, Imani, with her winning personality, is a child to be admired. (Picture book. 5-8)