Any parent who has suffered through the last-minute madness of preparing school projects will smile at the premise of this transitional easy reader, part of a new series from Vail (The Horrible Playdate, p. 964). Dinosaurs Mama Rex and her son, T (as in T. Rex), have to race around town to complete the diorama project that little T forgets to mention until the day before the due date. Mama and T rush to the library, the museum, and the park for ideas and supplies, before creating a pig diorama, with a paper pig installed in a container of mud. Vail effectively captures the dynamic of a reluctant student and a well-meaning parent, as well as incorporating useful research strategies through their library and museum visits. The text has a droll sense of humor that integrates well with Björkman’s appealing, loose watercolors of the dinosaurs, which apparently are the only holdovers of their kind in the modern world of a large city. The diorama project, library visit, and reference books, and a map-like illustration of the museum visit all have clear (but unobtrusive) connections to the classroom, and librarians will like the one who cheerfully helps T, although she then checks out his books with her “magic wand.” This will work well as both a transitional easy reader and as a read-aloud in the early grades, especially before those inevitable diorama projects are due. (Easy reader. 5-8)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-439-40628-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2002
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
Scotton makes a stylish debut with this tale of a sleepless sheep—depicted as a blocky, pop-eyed, very soft-looking woolly with a skinny striped nightcap of unusual length—trying everything, from stripping down to his spotted shorts to counting all six hundred million billion and ten stars, twice, in an effort to doze off. Not even counting sheep . . . well, actually, that does work, once he counts himself. Dawn finds him tucked beneath a rather-too-small quilt while the rest of his flock rises to bathe, brush and riffle through the Daily Bleat. Russell doesn’t have quite the big personality of Ian Falconer’s Olivia, but more sophisticated fans of the precocious piglet will find in this art the same sort of daffy urbanity. Quite a contrast to the usual run of ovine-driven snoozers, like Phyllis Root’s Ten Sleepy Sheep, illustrated by Susan Gaber (2004). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-059848-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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