Time flies when you’re having fun reading this terrifically silly spoof.
Private investigator I returns to solve a case of lost time in this new installment of Lazar's Private I series.
“After dozing in my chair, I had some time on my hands,” begins the bright pink anthropomorphic capital letter I, depicted in a simple serif font and sporting a fedora hat and tie. Opting to take a stroll in the not-mean-looking streets of Capital City, he soon discovers that there is something amiss—a thief is absconding with the city’s clocks and timepieces. Private I interviews victims, including the letter G, who humorously goes by the name Grandfather and owns a store called Grandfather’s Clocks.Then the solution dawns on I. He calls for a noontime town meeting in Punctuation Park (“You'll know it's noon when the sun's directly overhead,” I advises), and when a certain letter shows up early, intent on sabotaging the park’s sundial, readers discover that there’s more to the time-averse thief than meets the eye. Wordplay and visual quips abound in this clever and uncontrived sendup of the detective noir drama. Dramatic irony is humorously supplied by the fact that the illustrations hint at the culprit’s identity from the very first pages. Both the puns and the whodunit will help kids build critical thinking and literacy skills. The cartoonish artwork, rendered in watercolor and colored pencil with letterpress details, have a retro sensibility.
Time flies when you’re having fun reading this terrifically silly spoof. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: April 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5492-4
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2022
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees.
After Duncan finds his crayons gone—yet again—letters arrive, detailing their adventures in friendship.
Eleven crayons send missives from their chosen spots throughout Duncan’s home (and one from his classroom). Red enjoys the thrill of extinguishing “pretend fires” with Duncan’s toy firetruck. White, so often dismissed as invisible, finds a new calling subbing in for the missing queen on the black-and-white chessboard. “Now everyone ALWAYS SEES ME!…(Well, half the time!)” Pink’s living the dream as a pastry chef helming the Breezy Bake Oven, “baking everything from little cupcakes…to…OTHER little cupcakes!” Teal, who’s hitched a ride to school in Duncan’s backpack, meets the crayons in the boy’s desk and writes, “Guess what? I HAVE A TWIN! How come you never told me?” Duncan wants to see his crayons and “meet their new friends.” A culminating dinner party assembles the crayons and their many guests: a table tennis ball, dog biscuits, a well-loved teddy bear, and more. The premise—personified crayons, away and back again—is well-trammeled territory by now, after over a dozen books and spinoffs, and Jeffers once more delivers his signature cartooning and hand-lettering. Though the pages lack the laugh-out-loud sight gags and side-splittingly funny asides of previous outings, readers—especially fans of the crayons’ previous outings—will enjoy checking in on their pals.
Quirky, familiar fun for series devotees. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780593622360
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2025
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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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