With Earth awash in throwaway fashion, here’s a welcome focus on one family’s creative upcycling.
With the help of her resourceful family, Bonnie embellishes used clothing to create a perfect first-day-of-school outfit.
Whether from the attic, the thrift store, or her own closet, the clothes Bonnie assembles are stained, worn out, or too big or small. Her older sister, Emilia, sympathizes and leads her to her own closet to demonstrate how she’s revamped older clothes by patching, hemming, and dyeing them. She shows Bonnie how to dye clothing and old sneakers with blueberries and onion skins. Bonnie asks her grandfather, a knitter, for help, and after a couple of days of tutelage, the pair have two new patches, “one neat and tidy and one new and scraggly.” As Mom prepares to alter Bonnie’s “too-big and too-small” clothing, Bonnie notices Mom’s embroidered shirt and soon learns to thread a needle and stitch simple patterns on socks and T-shirts. Finally, Bonnie’s back-to-school wardrobe is ready, each piece enhanced with the help of her clever family members—and a few crafty, sparkly additions of her own. Bonnie and Emilia are brown-skinned, their mother presents as Black, and their grandfather is light-skinned. While facial expressions aren’t especially detailed, familial scenes of collaborative work cheerfully extend the story. Final pages briefly discuss natural dyes, embroidery, knitting, and accessorizing. By highlighting one child’s personal expression, Moore removes the stigma from secondhand clothing. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
With Earth awash in throwaway fashion, here’s a welcome focus on one family’s creative upcycling. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-8075-1010-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Whitman
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share.
In this latest in the series, Little Blue Truck, driven by pal Toad, is challenged to a countryside race by Racer Red, a sleek, low-slung vehicle.
Blue agrees, and the race is on. Although the two start off “hood to hood / and wheel to wheel,” they switch positions often as they speed their way over dusty country roads. Blue’s farm friends follow along to share in the excitement and shout out encouragement; adult readers will have fun voicing the various animal sounds. Short rhyming verses on each page and several strategic page turns add drama to the narrative, but soft, mottled effects in the otherwise colorful illustrations keep the competition from becoming too intense. Racer Red crosses the finish line first, but Blue is a gracious loser, happy to have worked hard. That’s a new concept for Racer Red, who’s laser-focused on victory but takes Blue’s words (“win or lose, it’s fun to try!”) to heart—a revelation that may lead to worthwhile storytime discussions. When Blue’s farm animal friends hop into the truck for the ride home, Racer Red tags along and learns a second lesson, one about speed. “Fast is fun, / and slow is too, / as long as you’re / with friends.”
A friendship tale with solid messaging and plenty of fun sounds to share. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780063387843
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
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
BOOK REVIEW
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