As comfortable as a Sunday afternoon with Grandma, Derby’s picture book sneaks a wee bit of financial literacy into her story of playtime and imagination.
Evie’s weekly shopping trip with Grandma is something special. Right away, young readers will see that Evie and Grandma are preparing for no ordinary trip to the market. “On Sunday night, after we put on our nightgowns, Grandma and I go shopping,” says Evie. Grandma dons her spiffy blue hat with the feather, and Evie grabs Grandma’s big, black purse, and then it’s time to shop. But their trip begins not in a taxi or walking through a town square. It begins in the comfort of Grandma’s big, comfy bed. Evie and Grandma break open the Sunday paper, pull out the sales ads, and begin. Simple phrasing, sparse and easy to read, and charmingly spare watercolor art help create a feeling that is at once realistic and fantastical. The shopping duo plunge headlong into the sales ads, choosing items from marked-down hams and sweet cherries to mustard; these two don’t dream big—they dream thrifty. Evie has stuffed Grandma’s purse with colorful play money, and the two follow a “budget” as they wend their way through grocery stores, furniture stores and fashion outlets. Strickland’s playful mix of watercolor, paper cutouts, and collage both engages on its own and supports the story’s theme.
Both old-fashioned and fresh-feeling, this book is thoroughly worthy of a shopping trip. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60060-438-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Lee & Low Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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