A beautiful, bighearted adventure, offering delight where it’s needed most.
Denniston’s debut picture book follows a patriotic rat looking for ways to help out around a U.S. military base.
“Maggie P. Worthington was no ordinary rat. Maggie was a patriotic rat. A salute-the-flag rat. A military rat.” So begins the tale of an earnest American rat who proves too small to enlist, too ratty to work in the kitchen, and too small to write letters to soldiers on duty. But she’s just perfect for befriending Grace (who has light-colored skin and brown hair), the lonely daughter of an active serviceman. Denniston delivers a sweet story with just the right amount of repetition (“I’m no ordinary rat”) and variation (“I’m a ready-for-duty / serve-my-country / shake-and-bake / shoulder-to-cry-on rat”) to foreshadow and then make poignant the meeting of “military rat” and “military brat.” Murray deploys playful watercolor illustrations to capture Maggie’s determined and forlorn expressions, as well as her plucky, pintsized positioning in the world (the image of Maggie marching alongside the soldiers’ boots is particularly striking). Through the use of beige backgrounds, blank spaces, and blue tones, Murray conveys the sparseness of military life and a sense both of loneliness and futility. There’s also color, signaling hope, in Maggie’s ears, feet, and tail, as well as in Grace’s pants and the flag. Young readers will take Maggie to heart and march proudly alongside her.
A beautiful, bighearted adventure, offering delight where it’s needed most.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2023
ISBN: 9798988426417
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Penny Wishes Press
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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