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
PERSPECTIVES
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
Handy advice for perpetually inquisitive children.
Interior decorator and TV personality Gaines invites readers to open their eyes and exercise their imaginations.
There’s a world to be explored out there—and only children can really take part. What does “looking for wonder” entail? Slowing down and looking up, around, and everywhere. At the outset, a group of eager, racially diverse young friends—including one who uses a wheelchair—are fully prepared for a grand adventure. They offer tips about how and where to look: Why, there’s a “grand parade” of marching ants! And, these kids add, perspective is key. A rainy day might signal gloom to some, but to those filled with wonder, showers bring “magic puddles for play”; a forest is “an enchanted world,” the ocean conceals “a spectacular city,” and the night sky boasts “extraordinary sights.” The takeaway: “Wonder is never in short supply.” It’s a robust, empowering message, as is the exhortation to “keep your mind open, and let curiosity guide the way.” Youngsters are also advised to share their discoveries. The upbeat narrative is delivered in clunky verse, but the colorful cartoonish illustrations brimming with activity and good cheer (including some adorable anthropomorphized animals in the backgrounds) make up for the textual lapses and should motivate readers to embark on their own “wonder explorations.”
Handy advice for perpetually inquisitive children. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781400247417
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tommy Nelson
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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