Just scratches the surface of multicultural education.
Best friends Martin, Sally, Nick, Pedro, and Yulee are getting ready to celebrate their school’s heritage festival.
Every family has been asked to bring something to eat and something to share for show and tell. Martin, whose father is Indian and whose mother is Japanese, is bringing two dishes to the festival along with a traditional Japanese flute. Sally is Haida, and her ancestors are some of the original inhabitants of North America; she brings a cedar-bark basket. Pedro, who is Brazilian, decides to do a soccer demo. Nick has Scandinavian heritage, and he is going to wear a Viking helmet. (His moms are an interracial couple.) And Egyptian-born Yulee is excited to share an Egyptian vegetarian dish called koshary that she made with her grandmother. At the festival, the five friends share their dishes and their show-and-tell items with the rest of the school, as do their classmates. Alongside the narrative are questions prompting readers to reflect on their own backgrounds. While it is refreshing to see both Indigenous and multiracial characters in a picture book, the text focuses on what has been called the “food, festival, folklore, and fashion” approach to multiculturalism rather the complexities of migration and displacement that are the reality of so many children’s lives. As a result, the text reads more as a series of cultural snapshots than a coherent narrative about diversity. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 55.6% of actual size.)
Just scratches the surface of multicultural education. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5253-0497-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2021
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers.
The bestselling series (How to Catch an Elf, 2016, etc.) about capturing mythical creatures continues with a story about various ways to catch the Easter Bunny as it makes its annual deliveries.
The bunny narrates its own story in rhyming text, beginning with an introduction at its office in a manufacturing facility that creates Easter eggs and candy. The rabbit then abruptly takes off on its delivery route with a tiny basket of eggs strapped to its back, immediately encountering a trap with carrots and a box propped up with a stick. The narrative focuses on how the Easter Bunny avoids increasingly complex traps set up to catch him with no explanation as to who has set the traps or why. These traps include an underground tunnel, a fluorescent dance floor with a hidden pit of carrots, a robot bunny, pirates on an island, and a cannon that shoots candy fish, as well as some sort of locked, hazardous site with radiation danger. Readers of previous books in the series will understand the premise, but others will be confused by the rabbit’s frenetic escapades. Cartoon-style illustrations have a 1960s vibe, with a slightly scary, bow-tied bunny with chartreuse eyes and a glowing palette of neon shades that shout for attention.
This bunny escapes all the traps but fails to find a logical plot or an emotional connection with readers. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4926-3817-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among
Pete, the cat who couldn’t care less, celebrates Christmas with his inimitable lassitude.
If it weren’t part of the title and repeated on every other page, readers unfamiliar with Pete’s shtick might have a hard time arriving at “groovy” to describe his Christmas celebration, as the expressionless cat displays not a hint of groove in Dean’s now-trademark illustrations. Nor does Pete have a great sense of scansion: “On the first day of Christmas, / Pete gave to me… / A road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” The cat is shown at the wheel of a yellow microbus strung with garland and lights and with a star-topped tree tied to its roof. On the second day of Christmas Pete gives “me” (here depicted as a gray squirrel who gets on the bus) “2 fuzzy gloves, and a road trip to the sea. / GROOVY!” On the third day, he gives “me” (now a white cat who joins Pete and the squirrel) “3 yummy cupcakes,” etc. The “me” mentioned in the lyrics changes from day to day and gift to gift, with “4 far-out surfboards” (a frog), “5 onion rings” (crocodile), and “6 skateboards rolling” (a yellow bird that shares its skateboards with the white cat, the squirrel, the frog, and the crocodile while Pete drives on). Gifts and animals pile on until the microbus finally arrives at the seaside and readers are told yet again that it’s all “GROOVY!”
Pete’s fans might find it groovy; anyone else has plenty of other “12 Days of Christmas” variants to choose among . (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-267527-9
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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