A sweet and playful yet serious story.
In Rusu’s picture book, a young girl’s visit to her grandma’s goes wrong at every turn thanks to an obsessive compulsiveness that manifests as an imaginary robot friend.
The narrator, a young redheaded girl, wears robot-themed socks every day, and in doing so imagines a red robot companion constantly by her side: “My robot is AMAZING! / She makes things go just right / and always gets things done her way / from morning until night.” The robot is very particular about routines, which becomes problematic when the girl has to spend a day at her grandma’s. Grandma has the wrong type of soap, the wrong toys, and the wrong color of plate for the cookies: “I sneak a look at the pile of treats / on a blue plate by the sink. / BZZT. BOOP. BRRRR.‘NO! NO! NO!’ / ‘WE ONLY USE THE PINK!’” Will Grandma find a way to placate Robot and salvage the visit? Rusu and illustrator Morón tell a cute and relatable story, depicting not only the girl’s “difficult” behavior but also the condition that underlies it—expressed by way of the oversize, exaggeratedly emotive robot. Morón’s pen-and-ink images capture the protagonists’ personalities as well as the incidental action against uncluttered backdrops. Rusu’s text is rhythmically awkward at times and derives little benefit from being enslaved to an ABCB rhyme pattern. Nonetheless, the book deftly conveys its message and will pull young readers along.
A sweet and playful yet serious story.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780829457094
Page Count: 32
Publisher: 4U2B Books & Media
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
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