“Friendship! Happiness! World peace! Maple syrup!” A buoyant, bristly ode to joy.
Smith eschews twee for twigs in this tribute to our world.
No joke, Stickler truly does love the wild, wonderful world in which we live. Resembling nothing so much as a toothy stickball with outsized ears, eyes (eight of them!), and pointy little teeth, Stickler runs about the natural world naming objects with all the enthusiasm of a Richard Scarry page (“Mushy moss! Sticky honey!”). The only thing better would be to see it all for the first time. Enter a bird with a can on his head. Stickler promptly decides the bird must be a space alien and, delighted, sets about showing the creature everything it loves about our planet. Happily, when the bird’s true identity is revealed, Stickler’s tour of world wonders has not gone unappreciated. While this tale may take its visual cues from such Smith classics as The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip (2000), written by George Saunders (Stickler exudes some serious gapper energy), it’s the hero’s spiky strangeness that proves the perfect accompaniment to a text that could otherwise dissolve into treacle. Here Smith has joined the oddball goofiness of his earlier books with the heart and soul of his more recent stories, and the result is a book as physically beautiful as it is moving. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
“Friendship! Happiness! World peace! Maple syrup!” A buoyant, bristly ode to joy. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9780593649831
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House Studio
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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
Making friends isn’t always this easy and convenient.
How do you make a new friend when an old one moves away?
Buddy (from Sorry, Grown-Ups, You Can’t Go to School, 2019, etc.) is feeling lonely. His best friend just moved across town. To make matters worse, there is a field trip coming up, and Buddy needs a bus partner. His sister, Lady, has some helpful advice for making a new pal: “You just need to find something you have in common.” Buddy loves the game Robo Chargers and karate. Surely there is someone else who does, too! Unfortunately, there isn’t. However, when a new student arrives (one day later) and asks everyone to call her Sunny instead of Alison, Buddy gets excited. No one uses his given name, either; they just call him Buddy. He secretly whispers his “real, official name” to Sunny at lunch—an indication that a true friendship is being formed. The rest of the story plods merrily along, all pieces falling exactly into place (she even likes Robo Chargers!), accompanied by Bowers’ digital art, a mix of spot art and full-bleed illustrations. Friendship-building can be an emotionally charged event in a child’s life—young readers will certainly see themselves in Buddy’s plight—but, alas, there is not much storytelling magic to be found. Buddy and his family are White, Sunny and Mr. Teacher are Black, and Buddy’s other classmates are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Making friends isn’t always this easy and convenient. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-30709-0
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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