Reviews
Sail Away, Little Boat
“. . . Ishida’s voluptuous, dynamic full-bleed illustrations. . . The artist’s dense, smudged colors and cheery, streamlined characterizations may bring to mind classic Golden Books, while her strongly horizontal compositions feel bracing and bold – every spread View →
Nachshon, Who Was Afraid to Swim: A Passover Story
“Jago’s highly stylized digital pictures are handsome and heartfelt: his gold-hued palette and mural-like compositions convey the heat and oppressiveness of Egypt, while his elaborately textured (and seemingly handmade) surfaces make the pages feel burnished by the forces… View →
My Wandering Dreaming Mind
“Whatever the writer’s capacity, time constraints, or creative mood, these pages offer a trove of ideas to spark inspiration, among them exercises and crafting activities such as list making, shape poems, hand-crafted haiku holders, dialogue practice, and journaling. A… View →
Monkey with a Tool Belt
“Laid out in panels, some numbered, some boxed; laid out in loops; arranged as vignettes; or composed like a maze, the illustrations command a reader’s attention. Chico, looks sophisticated—he’s a grown-up cousin of Julius the sock monkey. . . not only gadget… View →
Hanukkah Around the World
“This tour of Hanukkah includes information on its historical significance and the ways in which it is celebrated in places like New York City, Turin, Sydney and Warsaw. After an introductory section about the history, terminology and customs associated with the holiday, the book View →
GIRL: Love, Sex, Romance, and Being You
“Rayne offers an empowering, thorough, and inclusive guide to sexuality for ‘older teenagers who identify as female.’ . . . Rayne’s book is notable for the breadth and depth of its discussions; readers seeking advice on or knowledge about virtually any aspect of… View →
It's Back to School We Go!: First Day Stories From Around the World
“Portrays the first day of class for children from 11 different countries. First-person accounts capture the similarities and differences among children across the globe. A Kenyan girl eats Mandazi (fried bread) for lunch, a Peruvian boy paddles a canoe to school on the Amazon… View →
Bears at the Beach: Counting 10 to 20
“Long outshadowed in the counting-book genre by their single-digit predecessors, numerals 10 through 20 get their day in the sun when 11 friendly-looking, swimsuit-clad bears turn a trip to the beach into a numbers game. Yektai. . . debuts as an illustrator in this clever… View →
Eight Wild Nights: A Family Hanukkah Tale
“. . .the ties that bind in this rhyming story are more Seinfeldian in nature (‘We await the arrival/ Of eight days of guests/ Friends and family, and pests,/ Who will threaten our very survival’). Of course, it’s all in good fun-what kid wouldn’t want to View →
All Year Long
“I’ll know it’s spring when robins sing,/and tulips give a nod, begins Deady’s ebullient young narrator as she embarks on a winsome dance through the seasons. Deady brings her poem satisfyingly full circle and translates nature’s rhythms into… View →
A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What Is a Noun?
“While this book may appear to be little more than a list of nouns, the witty zeal it brings to the task of enumeration makes this basic concept seem like plenty. . . Colored type highlights the nouns within the verse, which winds around the pictures in a bouncy typeface.… View →
Almost to Freedom
“Through Sally’s perceptive eyes, readers catch a hard-hitting glimpse of slave life. . . A captivating account of escape via the Underground Railroad includes many suspenseful moments. . . Nelson’s writing is immediate and often lyrical. Yet it is Bootman’s… View →
Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal
“With lively language and anecdotes, Nelson (Juneteenth) chronicles the life of African-American lawman Bass Reeves in a biography that elevates him to folk hero. . . It’s an arresting portrait of a man who rose from escaped slave in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) View →
Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg
“Posada’s paint and collage pictures are sumptuous in both texture and color; she beautifully evokes the furriness of a penguin’s belly and the mounded dirt and sticks of an alligator’s swampy nest. Even if the guessing may come easily, children will certainly… View →
The Steel Pan Man of Harlem
“Bootman (Fish for the Grand Lady) triumphs with this gorgeously moody, thoroughly cinematic retelling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, ingeniously set during the Harlem Renaissance and starring a mysterious musician from the Caribbean. . . With text that beautifully… View →
“Eleyor Snir’s vignettes of land, sea and sky have a strong decorative arts feel – there’s a soupçon of endearing visual detail in the animal families that appear (the pink fur of baby monkeys, the toothy grin of a whale pod) intermingled with curvilinear shapes View →
Santa's Secrets Revealed: All Your Questions Answered about Santa's Super Sleigh, His Flying Reindeer, and Other Wonders
“You can’t keep a good legend down – at least when it comes to Santa. A Young skeptic named Stevie joins the ranks of Virginia and others who have questioned Old Saint Nick’s existence. With confidence and a tongue-in-cheek flair, Solheim (It’s Disgusting… View →
Drop by Drop: A Story of Rabbi Akiva
“The man who became Rabbi Akiva, a famous Jewish sage who lived during the first and second centuries C.E., started life as an illiterate shepherd. But his wife, Rachel, who married him despite her rich father’s objections, ‘knew that a man with such goodness in his heart,… View →
Zayde Babysits before Passover
“While Ruthie’s parents help Bubbe prepare to host the seder, Zayde makes his debut as Ruthie’s babysitter, guided by 10 instructions from Mommy. Humor emerges from the contrast between Sutton’s administrative-style text and Chappell’s naif illustrations as… View →
Big Bold Beautiful Me
“Body positivity shines through a jaunty rhyming text . . . . Individual examples are then followed by the hearty refrain ‘When I look in the mirror/ what do I see?// Big and bold and beautiful me!’ Burgett’s images effectively use mirrors to depict the kids’ attitude… View →
Grow Happy
“Creating and caring for a garden serves as an apt metaphor for self-care in this sensitive story from the father-daughter team of Lasser and Foster-Lasser. . . . Crinkly, textured papers bring pleasing warmth to Lyles’s mixed-media collages, creating an atmosphere of… View →
Not Every Princess
“The authors keep their messaging to a minimum; coupled with the emotion and humor in Docampo’s artwork, it goes a long way to helping the book feel like a book and not just a resource.”—Publisher’s Weekly View →