A celebration of book-qua-book from Burleigh (Lookin’ for Bird in the Big City, p. 582, etc.). A cheery little boy in a pompadour walks himself, an assortment of animal friends, and the reader through the book in hand, explicitly developing the metaphor of physical book as mental journey: “The way this page swings open, / then closes—like a door! / I’m heading into the next room now— / because I want some more!” Each double-page spread deconstructs the notion of page, allowing a trompe-l’oeil fold to reveal what comes before or after, or permitting characters to break through the plane entirely. (In one combination, the reader sees the head of a crocodile poking through a hole, and then, upon the turn of the page, the backside of the crocodile looking through that very same hole at the previous page.) Yaccarino’s (So Big, 2000, etc.) characteristically flat illustrations here take on some weight, occupying two and three dimensions at the same time—a perfect marriage of illustrative style to concept. Unfortunately, the concept is executed at the narrative level in verse that barely rises above doggerel, attempting to convey a fairly sophisticated conceit in language better suited to Sesame Street. In fact, the whole production is well-meaning in a very Sesame Street–esque way, failing to challenge the reader as other attempts at picture-book metaliterature do (Art Spiegelman’s Open Me . . . I’m a Dog, 1997, comes to mind). The “story,” such as it is, ends with the following statement: “Wait—the fun’s not over yet. / I’ll catch my breath—and then, / walk around to the front of the book, / and go back through again!” As a curiosity, readers may “go through” once. Again? Not likely. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028805-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2001
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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