A satisfying snow day saga.
Follow one child’s monumental effort to catch a snowflake.
Liam, a small, dark-haired child with peach-colored skin, has a singular mission: “I want to catch a snowflake. Just one snowflake. Right here.” (The accompanying image shows the young narrator, tongue sticking out.) Wearing green mittens, snow boots, and bobble hat, Liam spends the whole day romping in the snow. The child lies on the ground, builds a snowman, and then climbs it (to be closer to the sky) and even runs as fast as possible, mouth open, to no avail. Exhausted by these efforts and then called inside, Liam catches the last snowflake of the day with a flying leap…as the flake lands, safely in hand. As Liam heads inside for cocoa and crafts, the day ends on a comfortable note. Jonker’s naïve illustrations feature thick black lines and expressive movement with comic strip–like pacing. A detailed closeup on the last flake of the day shows the crystalline snowflake melt in the warmth of Liam’s mitten in a wordless four-panel page that brings just the right amount of wonder and beauty to this otherwise whimsical tale. Liam’s various snow-swallowing poses, tongue lolling out, are sure to entertain, and even though “hot chocolate probably tastes better anyway,” any young reader excited about a snow day can be expected to attempt to follow suit.
A satisfying snow day saga. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9781419760112
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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