A sympathetic protagonist finds common ground with a diverse group of friends.
A shy but imaginative girl struggles to make friends until she overcomes her fears in Daniel-Ayoade’s picture book, illustrated by newcomer Logina.
Third grader Kayla sits alone every lunch period. She wants to approach Naomi, Samantha, and Bianca to ask whether she can sit with them, but she’s afraid; her shyness makes her hold back. She thinks of her grandmother’s advice: “Face your fear, Kayla. What’s the worst that could happen?” Unfortunately, Kayla’s imagination is so vivid, she can come up with a lot of horrible results. She sits alone, and later, she avoids finding a partner in gym by hiding in the bathroom. At home, Kayla confesses to her brother, Eric, that she’s been avoiding her schoolmates because she fears what might happen: “Eric grunted a reply. He had autism and didn’t speak, but she knew he meant to say, ‘I know how you feel. Next time, take a deep breath and try to stay calm.’ ” The next day, when Naomi hands Kayla a party invitation, Kayla breathes deeply and accepts. At the party, Kayla soon forgets to feel shy and—with the encouragement of her new friend and an incentive to win a gift for her brother—finds the courage to sing for the guests. Some pages have just a couple of lines of text and others 10 or more, but Daniel-Ayoade’s straightforward narrative is inviting, even in the more text-dense pages. The open-ended titular question is answered in Kayla’s own imaginings, depicted in Logina’s soft-edged cartoonlike illustrations. While Kayla’s fears of being mocked are understandable, her imagined consequences finally become so ridiculous, as comically depicted by Logina, that readers will laugh along with her. Kayla and another girl have different shades of brown skin and curly hair, a third girl is pale and blonde, and Naomi is depicted as Asian American, but the text doesn’t call attention to the cast’s ethnicities (beyond giving Naomi the surname “Lau,” a variant on the Chinese “Liu”), making their differences feel natural.
A sympathetic protagonist finds common ground with a diverse group of friends.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77701-355-4
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Jewels & Pearls Publishing Ltd.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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