A joyous visual feast
A little Caucasian boy and girl in 19th-century garb enact the familiar song.
The song unfolds on the verso while on the recto, each gift is presented within an ornate frame that grows and changes shape from day to day. Pham gives readers plenty to look at. On the third day, while the girl accepts the three French hens, the little boy shoos away one of the turtledoves; on the fifth day, the little girl gazes at the five finches bearing five rings, while the little boy tries to keep one of the six geese a-laying from arriving too early. The artist paints different varieties of hens, geese and swans, preparing readers for the truly multicultural spreads that begin on the eighth day. The maids a-milking come from all corners of the globe in variations on traditional dress, as do the rest of the humans. Among the lords a-leaping are a bearded Cossack, a turbaned rajah, a Georgian gentleman and two lords from different African cultures. The pipers include, with a little bit of artistic license, a man in Tyrolean dress playing an alpenhorn. One final spread crams all 78 gifts into two pages as the little girl kisses the goggle-eyed boy. (All 78 also appear on the reverse of the jacket, which unfolds into a poster.) The final two pages provide background on Epiphany and the origins of the song.
A joyous visual feast . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-37413-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color
Duncan wants to draw, but instead of crayons, he finds a stack of letters listing the crayons’ demands in this humorous tale.
Red is overworked, laboring even on holidays. Gray is exhausted from coloring expansive spaces (elephants, rhinos and whales). Black wants to be considered a color-in color, and Peach? He’s naked without his wrapper! This anthropomorphized lot amicably requests workplace changes in hand-lettered writing, explaining their work stoppage to a surprised Duncan. Some are tired, others underutilized, while a few want official titles. With a little creativity and a lot of color, Duncan saves the day. Jeffers delivers energetic and playful illustrations, done in pencil, paint and crayon. The drawings are loose and lively, and with few lines, he makes his characters effectively emote. Clever spreads, such as Duncan’s “white cat in the snow” perfectly capture the crayons’ conundrum, and photographic representations of both the letters and coloring pages offer another layer of texture, lending to the tale’s overall believability.
A comical, fresh look at crayons and color . (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: June 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-25537-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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