The celebration of the 100th day of class is a popular addition to the school calendar, reflected in a recent spate of read-alouds with centenary themes. McNamara (Too Many Valentines, below) joins the centennial bandwagon with this first offering in a classroom-based easy reader series featuring a small group of multi-ethnic first-graders from Robin Hill School. This story features a red-haired girl named Heather who is excited about the planned celebration with each child invited to bring 100 tiny items to school to share with the class. She gathers 100 buttons of all sorts, but then is unable to attend the party because she is sick. The class delays the celebration to wait for Heather’s return, and each child then shares 101 items on the next school day. McNamara’s clever, humorous story is a natural for sharing on the 101st day of school, with opportunities for related math activities (counting, sorting, adding, and learning about time), but it also serves well for children who are just beginning to read simple stories on their own. Gordon’s loose watercolor and ink drawings are full of tiny, humorous details, such as Hannah’s buttons flying all over after she sneezes or 100 spiders escaping from their box on a child’s desk. The Robin Hill School stories will find a ready audience on easy reader shelves in both school and public libraries. (Easy reader. 5-7)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85536-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Aladdin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
In his third beginning reader about Otto the robot, Milgrim (See Otto, 2002, etc.) introduces another new friend for Otto, a little mouse named Pip. The simple plot involves a large balloon that Otto kindly shares with Pip after the mouse has a rather funny pointing attack. (Pip seems to be in that I-point-and-I-want-it phase common with one-year-olds.) The big purple balloon is large enough to carry Pip up and away over the clouds, until Pip runs into Zee the bee. (“Oops, there goes Pip.”) Otto flies a plane up to rescue Pip (“Hurry, Otto, Hurry”), but they crash (and splash) in front of some hippos with another big balloon, and the story ends as it begins, with a droll “See Pip point.” Milgrim again succeeds in the difficult challenge of creating a real, funny story with just a few simple words. His illustrations utilize lots of motion and basic geometric shapes with heavy black outlines, all against pastel backgrounds with text set in an extra-large typeface. Emergent readers will like the humor in little Pip’s pointed requests, and more engaging adventures for Otto and Pip will be welcome additions to the limited selection of funny stories for children just beginning to read. (Easy reader. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-689-85116-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
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