Despite the mildly unusual twist, it treads familiar territory and not particularly well.
As if starting school weren’t worry enough, new students need to fret about classmates who bring their oversized reptilian pets along.
“The rules of the playground are hard for a beast. / He’ll break the first one as soon as released.” This proves to be the case. A yellow one bumps into the principal in his haste to get outside. A green one’s forelegs are too short for the monkey bars, so she pitches a fit until she realizes she can use her tail instead…and bends the whole structure. A long, thin, blue dragon pushes the merry-go-round. “He’ll start out slow but soon he will run. / Then the ride becomes more scary than fun.” (The illustration for this is particularly amusing.) A final, purple dragon is very well-behaved, but excitement brings out the flames. Still, the child who brought the yellow one makes a case that the dragon is smart and can learn and listen, and the principal, a woman of color, says that he’s welcome, a message that few, if any, books in this vein echo. Gassman’s rhythms and rhymes are sometimes rough and don’t always scan well. Many of the figures have white rather than black outlines, giving them the appearance of cutouts laid on top of the background in the brightly colored, Saturday morning–cartoonish illustrations. The racially diverse students and teachers include a child with glasses, one with an arm in a sling, and one in a wheelchair.
Despite the mildly unusual twist, it treads familiar territory and not particularly well. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68436-035-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers.
A winning wheel of cheddar with braggadocio to match narrates a tale of comeuppance and redemption.
From humble beginnings among kitchen curds living “quiet lives of pasteurization,” the Big Cheese longs to be the best and builds success and renown based on proven skills and dependable results: “I stuck to the things I was good at.” When newcomer Wedge moves to the village of Curds-on-Whey, the Cheese’s star status wobbles and falls. Turns out that quiet, modest Wedge is also multitalented. At the annual Cheese-cathlon, Wedge bests six-time winner Cheese in every event, from the footrace and chess to hat making and bread buttering. A disappointed Cheese throws a full-blown tantrum before arriving at a moment of truth: Self-calming, conscious breathing permits deep relief that losing—even badly—does not result in disaster. A debrief with Wedge “that wasn’t all about me” leads to further realizations: Losing builds empathy for others; obsession with winning obscures “the joy of participating.” The chastened cheddar learns to reserve bragging for lifting up friends, because anyone can be the Big Cheese. More didactic and less pun-rich than previous entries in the Food Group series, this outing nevertheless couples a cheerful refrain with pithy life lessons that hit home. Oswald’s detailed, comical illustrations continue to provide laughs, including a spot with Cheese onstage doing a “CHED” talk.
From curds to riches, from meltdown to uplift—this multicourse romp delivers. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780063329508
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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
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