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ABCS ON WINGS

Name: ABCS ON WINGS
Author: Ramon Olivera
ISBN: 978-1-4814-3242-9

by Ramon Olivera ; illustrated by Ramon Olivera ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 21, 2015

This title lines up between a realistic approach and a comic one, soaring along nicely.

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Fasten your seat belts: here’s another alphabet book featuring airplanes. Does this one take flight over the others?

The geometric shapes and colorful graphic images make this one quite attractive. One or two words are assigned to each letter, displayed in both upper and lower cases, usually two letters to a double-page spread. Some words are natural choices—“Aa is for ace. / Bb is for biplane”—while others will require explanation. “Cc is for carrier. / Dd is for deck” shows a plane taking off from an aircraft carrier. “Kk is for Kitty Hawk” occupies a double-page spread of its own and depicts a triumphant Wilbur aboard the Wright Flyer with Orville running along behind in the sand. Olivera has mixed success for the tricky letters, offering up “quick,” “UFO” (paired playfully if rather opaquely for the audience with “vanished”), “X axis,” and “zeppelin.” Most spreads include humans interacting with the key object. Though there is no legend, there are enough interesting terms to hold kids’ attention, especially those who are fascinated with airplanes. Variations in perspective and the mood of the artwork keep the two-dimensional scenes from feelng static while retaining the posterlike style.

This title lines up between a realistic approach and a comic one, soaring along nicely. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: July 21, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-4814-3242-9

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: March 31, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S TRANSPORTATION

- BOOK REVIEW
WHOSE BIG RIG?
by Toni Buzzeo ; illustrated by Ramon Olivera

- BOOK REVIEW
ABCS ON WHEELS
by Ramon Olivera ; illustrated by Ramon Olivera

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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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

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES

- BOOK REVIEW
ON THE FIRST DAY OF FIRST GRADE
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Sarah Jennings

- BOOK REVIEW
FIVE LITTLE BUNNIES
by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

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LOVE FROM THE CRAYONS

by Drew Daywalt ; illustrated by Oliver Jeffers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 24, 2019

As ephemeral as a valentine.

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Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.

Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.

As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)