A stirring conversation starter.
A song has ended.
Books for children about death are complex things. Margaret Wise Brown succinctly summarized death in 1958’s The Dead Bird. Tomie dePaola made it personal in 1973’s Nana Upstairs & Nana Downstairs, and Anastasia Higginbotham demystified it in 2016’s Death Is Stupid. Yardi and Schu seemingly tip their hats to each of these works. Accompanied by Schu’s evocative art, dominated by inky blues and blacks and rippling curves, Yardi’s words are simple but lightly poetic: “I know the whale lived. I know the whale sang. But when it washes ashore, the whale isn’t singing anymore.” But she doesn’t shy away from the unkinder aspects: “It is wonderful and horrible and beautiful and stinky.” As the light-skinned young protagonist explores the corpse on the beach, Papa guides the exploration. A few pages in, readers may question if Papa was really there; the protagonist asks, “Where is the whale now?,” only to be met with a double-page spread of silence as the youngster stares at a picture of Papa on a dresser in a dark room. Later, while drawing a whale on the street in chalk, the protagonist wonders: “When were we last together? Will I ever be with them again?” The answer, in regard to the whale, comes a few years later, when its bones are put on display at a local museum. And Papa? That answer is yet to come.
A stirring conversation starter. (author’s note) (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781499816075
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little Bee Books
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
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Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with...
Reynolds and Brown have crafted a Halloween tale that balances a really spooky premise with the hilarity that accompanies any mention of underwear.
Jasper Rabbit needs new underwear. Plain White satisfies him until he spies them: “Creepy underwear! So creepy! So comfy! They were glorious.” The underwear of his dreams is a pair of radioactive-green briefs with a Frankenstein face on the front, the green color standing out all the more due to Brown’s choice to do the entire book in grayscale save for the underwear’s glowing green…and glow they do, as Jasper soon discovers. Despite his “I’m a big rabbit” assertion, that glow creeps him out, so he stuffs them in the hamper and dons Plain White. In the morning, though, he’s wearing green! He goes to increasing lengths to get rid of the glowing menace, but they don’t stay gone. It’s only when Jasper finally admits to himself that maybe he’s not such a big rabbit after all that he thinks of a clever solution to his fear of the dark. Brown’s illustrations keep the backgrounds and details simple so readers focus on Jasper’s every emotion, writ large on his expressive face. And careful observers will note that the underwear’s expression also changes, adding a bit more creep to the tale.
Perfect for those looking for a scary Halloween tale that won’t leave them with more fears than they started with. Pair with Dr. Seuss’ tale of animate, empty pants. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0298-0
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
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
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