A dark-haired lady in a shapeless overcoat keeps the letters of the alphabet caged until they escape into a witty and inventive story. When the Alphabet Keeper cleans the cage that imprisons the letters, out they fly, escaping through the window on the breeze. She chases them, but they elude capture—when she goes after them in a bus, the h flies down and turns the bus into a bush. When she evolves a plan, the t turns her plan into a plant. When the letters “Shout loud!” the c turns loud into a cloud, where they hide. Letters added, subtracted, and reversed contribute to the wordplay that will delight children particularly as they master the trick, for example, of reading “rats” backwards so that it is “star.” In the end, the Alphabet Keeper loses them all, as they change “moo” into “moon” adding “et” to the rock she threw at them, and the rocket carries them to the moon. The illustrations use heavy black line and a few basic colors to create strong, simple, but energetic shapes. Each letter (they are all lower case) has an eye and a mouth, giving them a bit of personality while retaining their essence of letter form. A bright bit of imagination worthy of the old television show The Electric Company. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: March 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-82347-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated.
Bill Martin Jr and John Archambault’s classic alphabet book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (1989) gets the Halloween treatment.
Chung follows the original formula to the letter. In alphabetical order, each letter climbs to the top of a tree. They are knocked back to the ground in a jumble before climbing up in sequence again. In homage to the spooky holiday theme, they scale a “creaky old tree,” and a ghostly jump scare causes the pileup. The chunky, colorful art is instantly recognizable. The charmingly costumed letters (“H swings a tail. / I wears a patch. J and K don / bows that don’t match”) are set against a dark backdrop, framed by pages with orange or purple borders. The spreads feature spiderwebs and jack-o’-lanterns. The familiar rhyme cadence is marred by the occasional clunky or awkward phrase; in particular, the adapted refrain of “Chicka chicka tricka treat” offers tongue-twisting fun, but it’s repeatedly followed by the disappointing half-rhyme “Everybody sneaka sneak.” Even this odd construction feels shoehorned into place, since “sneaking” makes little sense when every character in the book is climbing together. The final line of the book ends on a more satisfying note, with “Everybody—time to eat!”
A bit predictable but pleasantly illustrated. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781665954785
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
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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