Perfectly satisfying.
Donaldson speaks for the trees in this tale of lighthearted gratitude to Earth’s leafy giants.
Rhyming couplets (“Here is a wood where the trees grow tall / And here is the tallest tree of all”) describe the day when brown-skinned James and pale-skinned Ginger meet. Her paper airplane lands in the open book he’s reading. They hit it off, playing happily together, reading stories, and building a castle with stones. After this one afternoon, they look for each other in vain. It’s hard to even identify the tree again (“So many paths! So many trees!”) until Ginger witnesses its fall at the blade of a saw and sees it being carried “off to the paper factory.” A concise montage—involving a chipper, water, and rollers—neatly outlines the process of paper-making. Sandøy’s fine-lined, full-color illustrations offer a lovely, airy sense of the outdoors and add charm to the catalog of familiar uses for the paper made from the tree. Among the new paper items are a book for Ginger and a pad of paper. James folds a piece of paper into a plane—which he’s flying when the pair meet again as the book concludes. The simple, circular tale is both a generous explanation of how humans consume natural resources and a subtle reminder that these are gifts to be respected. An author’s note emphasizes that “trees are precious” and encourages youngsters to recycle this very book should it eventually fall apart.
Perfectly satisfying. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: yesterday
ISBN: 9798225014636
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts.
In this latest slice in the Food Group series, Humble Pie learns to stand up to a busy friend who’s taking advantage of his pal’s hard work on the sidelines.
Jake the Cake and Humble Pie are good friends. Where Pie is content to toil in the background, Jake happily shines in the spotlight. Alert readers will notice that Pie’s always right there, too, getting A-pluses and skiing expertly just behind—while also doing the support work that keeps every school and social project humming. “Fact: Nobody notices pie when there’s cake nearby!” When the two friends pair up for a science project, things begin well. But when the overcommitted Jake makes excuse after excuse, showing up late or not at all, a panicked Pie realizes that they won’t finish in time. When Jake finally shows up on the night before the project’s due, Pie courageously confronts him. “And for once, I wasn’t going to sugarcoat it.” The friends talk it out and collaborate through the night for the project’s successful presentation in class the next day. John and Oswald’s winning recipe—plentiful puns and delightful visual jokes—has yielded another treat here. The narration does skew didactic as it wraps up: “There’s nothing wrong with having a tough conversation, asking for help, or making sure you’re being treated fairly.” But it’s all good fun, in service of some gentle lessons about social-emotional development.
A flavorful call to action sure to spur young introverts. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780063469730
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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