Inspired by Brooklyn’s cacophonous streetscapes, Singer’s cumulative rhyme counts down from ten to one: “Traffic jam, 10 horns beeping, / In the stroller, Baby’s sleeping.” Indeed, slumber continues throughout a riot of mechanical noise, until a chirping bird tweets Baby awake. Cneut’s full-bleed mixed-media paintings dispatch traditional perspective: Orange buildings lean, box-like yellow cabs careen and a multiethnic crowd works and plays, jammed up against the picture plane along with garbage cans, cell phones, pets and signs. Display type featuring sound words (“Grumble,” “Rinnnngggg”) overlays the wall-to-curb compositions. On the contrastingly serene white space above Singer’s text, Baby’s disembodied facial features (pale blue lashes, sleepy half-smile) float—until the waking page. There, a stylized, larger-than-life portrait of bright-eyed Baby looms, with text and art swapping sides. Cheerfully over-stimulating—a bit like the city itself. (Picture book/poetry. 3-7)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-618-60703-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2007
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
This charming, colorful counting tale of ten little fish runs full-circle. Although the light verse opens and closes with ten fish swimming in a line, page-by-page the line grows shorter as the number of fish diminishes one-by-one. One fish dives down, one gets lost, one hides, and another takes a nap until a single fish remains. Then along comes another fish to form a couple and suddenly a new family of little fish emerges to begin all over. Slick, digitally-created images of brilliant marine flora and fauna give an illusion of underwater depth and silence enhancing the verse’s numerical and theatrical progression. The holistic story bubbles with life’s endless cycle. (Picture book. 3-5)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-439-63569-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Blue Sky/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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