A solid definition of math that shows its ubiquity.
Another collaboration by Dotlich and Yoshikawa brings a school subject to life.
As in 2006’s What Is Science? jaunty rhymes introduce readers to many different answers to the titular question, the illustrations showing an array of children, diverse in terms of race and ability, exploring their world, attending school, and interacting with friends. By Dotlich’s account, math encompasses: ages, counting, money, addition and subtraction, the calendar, time, matching, weighing, baking, patterns, building a house, height, distances, selling, sorting, comparing, number stories, shapes, multiplication, and charts and graphs. But whereas the science topics were easy to discern (dinosaur fossils versus stars), children may have more trouble picking out the things listed in the rhymes in the illustrations. For instance, “It’s a matching game, / it’s a blastoff chart. / It’s a block of days. / It’s a whole, it’s a part.” The busy classroom scene shows a birthday pizza party in progress. Only diligent eyes will pick up on the bingo game that a few kids are playing, the two students measuring height against a wall, and the chart that shows the weekly schedule, all backgrounded by the giant pizza that’s front and center. Still, this is a great way to show even the math-averse or math-phobic the many ways that math is hiding in their everyday lives. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A solid definition of math that shows its ubiquity. (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-33777-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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
As ephemeral as a valentine.
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)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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