A spirited way to explore both causality and not-so-clean fun.
Henry tries his hardest to stay clean for a special day at school.
Henry, a boisterous, young rhinoceros, is very, very messy. Within the first two minutes of every day he is instantly covered in jelly stains and mud splatters. He just can’t help it. But one day, Henry sets out to stay clean. For the entire day. He eats only white food, jumps over every puddle, and sits in the back of the room during art class, far away from any paint. Henry is achieving his goal, but his classmates aren’t so lucky. Every time Henry narrowly misses a mess, he causes others to get dirty. That mud puddle that he jumped? It splashes his friend, the raccoon, instead. The jelly doughnut he avoided? It squirts onto his pal, the panda. Henry’s careful watch over his clumsiness has assured that he remains spotless, but his friends—and even his teacher—end up covered in grime, all because of him. And why was Henry trying so hard to stay clean in the first place? Because it was class picture day! In the photo, Henry beams, unsullied, but the rest of the class is a sticky mess. Breen surrounds the impish rhino with smudges, spots, and brightly colored chaos, onomatopoeic expressions of clumsiness rendered in messy display type. The text reveals just enough to allow the pictures maximum humorous effect.
A spirited way to explore both causality and not-so-clean fun. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8037-4156-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
