An empowering, slice-of-life story about learning.
A child struggles with school when he can’t remember his colors in Seay’s illustrated book for children.
When Carter Carver, a young Black boy, asks his mother if she can teach him at home rather than send him to school, she’s surprised; she listens as Carter explains how he feels left out because he doesn’t know his colors by heart. Carter can remember the colors of many specific things (“You know like snowballs are white, blueberries blue, and firetrucks just have to be red”), but he often has to guess when it comes to identifying hues. Even though Carter is great at a lot of things, he’s worried that if his friends find out he doesn’t know his colors, they’ll laugh at him. Although his mother assures him that everyone learns at their own speed, she also helps him develop a new technique to help him learn which color is which. By bringing together toys of like colors, his mother personalizes color matching, showing Carter he can learn. The author uses a rhyming scansion and simple language to make the text accessible: “Carter never worried much about colors. He knew he could pass almost any test. To get around not telling one from the other, he had found different ways to guess.” The supportive environment relieves readers from worrying about Carter; even if he doesn’t get everything right, they know he is safe and loved. Seay’s colorful illustrations are bright and well textured. Carter solves his problem by the story’s end, but this is just the beginning of his educational journey; learning his colors gives him the encouragement he needs to keep going.
An empowering, slice-of-life story about learning.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9798986344706
Page Count: 34
Publisher: PicBooks Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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BOOK REVIEW
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators.
Existing artwork from an artistic giant inspires a fairy-tale reimagination by a master of the horror genre.
In King’s interpretation of a classic Brothers Grimm story, which accompanies set and costume designs that the late Sendak created for a 1997 production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera, siblings Hansel and Gretel survive abandonment in the woods and an evil witch’s plot to gobble them up before finding their “happily ever after” alongside their father. Prose with the reassuring cadence of an old-timey tale, paired with Sendak’s instantly recognizable artwork, will lull readers before capitalizing on these creators’ knack for injecting darkness into seemingly safe spaces. Gaping faces loom in crevices of rocks and trees, and a gloomy palette of muted greens and ocher amplify the story’s foreboding tone, while King never sugarcoats the peach-skinned children’s peril. Branches with “clutching fingers” hide “the awful enchanted house” of a “child-stealing witch,” all portrayed in an eclectic mix of spot and full-bleed images. Featuring insults that might strike some as harsh (“idiot,” “fool”), the lengthy, dense text may try young readers’ patience, and the often overwhelmingly ominous mood feels more pitched to adults—particularly those familiar with King and Sendak—but an introduction acknowledges grandparents as a likely audience, and nostalgia may prompt leniency over an occasional disconnect between words and art.
Menacing and most likely to appeal to established fans of its co-creators. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780062644695
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 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
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