Now: good to book. Just three rungs up (good, goon, boon, book) and well-worth the climb.
Wyatt introduces kids to word ladders, in which a starting word leads step by step, by the substitution of one letter at a time, to a final word.
Lewis Carroll, who came up with lots of good word games, invented one called “doublets,” in which you took a word and changed one letter at a time to arrive at another word, often an opposite; for instance, push to pull: push, hush, husk, hulk, hull, pull. Easy peasy. Rain to snow, in eight moves. It’s a bit like chess, and it can be just as exasperating and invigorating. OK, here you go: rain, raid, said, slid, slip, ship, shop, show, snow. But you knew that, right? Almost any introduction to this word game is worth the entrance fee, and this one passes the mark easily. The artwork deftly and colorfully borrows from conventions of animation to provide two-page scenes that carry readers on each word journey, and there is a little narrative twist at the end, about whether or not a character is real or just a toy (boy into toy), which forces readers to stake a grasp on reality as they twist and turn these words into those words. A note at the end should set readers, both adults and kids, on their way to making their own word ladders.
Now: good to book. Just three rungs up (good, goon, boon, book) and well-worth the climb. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55453-824-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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
A charming blend of whimsy and medieval heroism highlighting the triumph of brains over brawn.
A young owl achieves his grand ambition.
Owl, an adorably earnest and gallant little owlet, dreams of being a knight. He imagines himself defeating dragons and winning favor far and wide through his brave exploits. When a record number of knights go missing, Owl applies to Knight School and is surprisingly accepted. He is much smaller than the other knights-in-training, struggles to wield weapons, and has “a habit of nodding off during the day.” Nevertheless, he graduates and is assigned to the Knight Night Watch. While patrolling the castle walls one night, a hungry dragon shows up and Owl must use his wits to avoid meeting a terrible end. The result is both humorous and heartwarming, offering an affirmation of courage and clear thinking no matter one’s size…and demonstrating the power of a midnight snack. The story never directly addresses the question of the missing knights, but it is hinted that they became the dragon’s fodder, leaving readers to question Owl’s decision to befriend the beast. Humor is supplied by the characters’ facial expressions and accented by the fact that Owl is the only animal in his order of big, burly human knights. Denise’s accomplished digital illustrations—many of which are full bleeds—often use a warm sepia palette that evokes a feeling of antiquity, and some spreads feature a pleasing play of chiaroscuro that creates suspense and drama.
A charming blend of whimsy and medieval heroism highlighting the triumph of brains over brawn. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: March 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-316-31062-8
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2022
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