Young readers will enjoy this earnest story’s constructive lesson.
A young girl and her classmates learn how to celebrate diversity in Tabron’s illustrated children’s book, based on events from her own life.
La June has lots of friends in her Detroit neighborhood, but her closest friend is Jenefer. They enjoy imaginary adventures in Jenefer’s treehouse and play softball in the park. They’re in the same class at school, and La June looks forward to eating lunch with her best friend each day. But one day, Jenefer moves away, and when La June tries to make new friends, she’s suddenly aware of the strict social dynamics of her class. Jenefer was white and La June is Black; in the lunchroom, “She and Jenefer always sat at the middle table, but no one is sitting there now. As she looks around the room, she notices everyone is sitting with people who look like them.” Things become further complicated when Eva and her family move into Jenefer’s old house; Eva has different interests than Jenefer did, and La June is confused by the traditional Mexican food that Eva’s family eats. However, with the help of La June’s mother and her teacher, Mr. Stokes, she and her classmates begin having discussions about their differences and learn about what it takes to unite as a community. Tabron’s book will most appeal to children in the upper elementary age group, due to the large amount of text per page and the overall length of the story. Overall, the narrative delivers an effective message and has a pleasingly natural flow with engaging characters. Tabron, the chief executive officer of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, helpfully reveals in the back matter that her current work with children and families relates to the healing that she found in her experiences at school in Detroit, which inspired this book. Grooms’ full-color cartoon illustrations feature classrooms with diverse students, who are portrayed with a range of skin tones.
Young readers will enjoy this earnest story’s constructive lesson.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781633311039
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back.
With such short arms, how can Tiny T. Rex give a sad friend a hug?
Fleck goes for cute in the simple, minimally detailed illustrations, drawing the diminutive theropod with a chubby turquoise body and little nubs for limbs under a massive, squared-off head. Impelled by the sight of stegosaurian buddy Pointy looking glum, little Tiny sets out to attempt the seemingly impossible, a comforting hug. Having made the rounds seeking advice—the dino’s pea-green dad recommends math; purple, New Age aunt offers cucumber juice (“That is disgusting”); red mom tells him that it’s OK not to be able to hug (“You are tiny, but your heart is big!”), and blue and yellow older sibs suggest practice—Tiny takes up the last as the most immediately useful notion. Unfortunately, the “tree” the little reptile tries to hug turns out to be a pterodactyl’s leg. “Now I am falling,” Tiny notes in the consistently self-referential narrative. “I should not have let go.” Fortunately, Tiny lands on Pointy’s head, and the proclamation that though Rexes’ hugs may be tiny, “I will do my very best because you are my very best friend” proves just the mood-lightening ticket. “Thank you, Tiny. That was the biggest hug ever.” Young audiences always find the “clueless grown-ups” trope a knee-slapper, the overall tone never turns preachy, and Tiny’s instinctive kindness definitely puts him at (gentle) odds with the dinky dino star of Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. series.
Wins for compassion and for the refusal to let physical limitations hold one back. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4521-7033-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
