It’s a successful visual metaphor but lacking in some practical application of text.
A little girl deals with an annoying manifestation of overwhelming negative thoughts.
When the monster is not cackling or blathering nonsense, it declares she has “a huge head” as she looks in the mirror and berates her comments as “dumb.” The girl puts on a hat and doesn’t participate, but the monster grows, lurking just behind her, until she confronts it across the gutter. She drowns it out by making her own instruments from household oddments—cutlery, tin cans, jars—and it begins to shrink. Eventually, she squashes the buzzing, fly-sized monster between two pot-lid cymbals—“SPLAT!”—and she never hears from it again. (If only it were so easy.) The text is very sparse, with far more sound effects than narrative text, so the story depends on the pictures to fill in the gaps, especially in the opening few pages. It would perhaps be best read silently or experienced as part of a discussion. Among her multiracial classmates, the white-appearing girl has a burst of curly, bright-red hair. The monster is an amorphous blob of shadowy scribbles with rounded teeth and flipperlike appendages. Kang’s art has the look and texture of colored pencils on ribbed paper, with thick, fluid lines and effective layering. Color sets the mood; neutrals take over when the monster is influential—the girl’s bright hair is literally squashed under the bluish-gray hat—and transition to a brighter palette when the girl is in control.
It’s a successful visual metaphor but lacking in some practical application of text. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4847-2882-6
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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
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
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