Elegantly constructed yet warmly comforting—a soothing balm for children undergoing similar changes.
A child who moves overseas grapples with what home is.
The young unnamed East Asian–presenting narrator explains home in basic terms: “In the mornings we leave home, and in the evenings we return.” Sometimes the family members—consisting of the little one, Mama, and Amah (Taiwanese for Grandmother)—go away for a longer time, but they always come back…until one day, they leave for good. As their plane flies across the ocean, “home becomes a wish.” They arrive in a strange new place with unfamiliar people and sounds. “How can this be our home?” the protagonist asks. Kuo’s spare yet graceful prose and her signature graphic-style artwork, beautifully saturated with pinks and blues, imbue this simple story with heft. One particularly moving double-page spread depicts the narrator in a canoe on a vast sea rowing away from the family’s old apartment building on one side toward their new house on the other. And then, “slowly, odd becomes ordinary, and strange becomes sweet.” The child comes to some profound realizations: “There are different homes for different times: a home from before, a home for now, even a home for later.” A close reading into the landscapes (Seattle’s Space Needle can be seen in one spread) and clues such as the use of Taiwanese show just how far this family has come.
Elegantly constructed yet warmly comforting—a soothing balm for children undergoing similar changes. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250881328
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his...
It’s a wonderful day in the jungle, so why’s Jim Panzee so grumpy?
When Jim woke up, nothing was right: "The sun was too bright, the sky was too blue, and bananas were too sweet." Norman the gorilla asks Jim why he’s so grumpy, and Jim insists he’s not. They meet Marabou, to whom Norman confides that Jim’s grumpy. When Jim denies it again, Marabou points out that Jim’s shoulders are hunched; Jim stands up. When they meet Lemur, Lemur points out Jim’s bunchy eyebrows; Jim unbunches them. When he trips over Snake, Snake points out Jim’s frown…so Jim puts on a grimacelike smile. Everyone has suggestions to brighten his mood: dancing, singing, swinging, swimming…but Jim doesn’t feel like any of that. He gets so fed up, he yells at his animal friends and stomps off…then he feels sad about yelling. He and Norman (who regrets dancing with that porcupine) finally just have a sit and decide it’s a wonderful day to be grumpy—which, of course, makes them both feel a little better. Suzanne Lang’s encouragement to sit with your emotions (thus allowing them to pass) is nearly Buddhist in its take, and it will be great bibliotherapy for the crabby, cranky, and cross. Oscar-nominated animator Max Lang’s cartoony illustrations lighten the mood without making light of Jim’s mood; Jim has comically long arms, and his facial expressions are quite funny.
Though Jim may have been grumpy because a chimp’s an ape and not a monkey, readers will enjoy and maybe learn from his journey. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-553-53786-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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