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Aug 29, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Jairo Buitrago |Elisa Amado |Laura Hughes |Christina Geist
by Jairo Buitrago ; illustrated by Linda Wolfsgruber ; translated by Elisa Amado ‧The history of the world presented lovingly through an intimate lens. A parcel of land turns out to be steeped in history. On the top of a small hill, a group of young girls relax under the sunny sky with their shoes off.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
The fine message here: Don’t shy away from the chance to be and have a good friend. Stepping out is better than hiding out. Ana Moose prefers being alone. She doesn’t have to worry about finding the right thing to say or being picked last for teams. Blending into her surroundings, she dubs herself Anonymoose. Then she sees her classmate Peter, a porcupine, building a fort and wishes she could share her own architectural ideas without revealing herself.
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Taraji P. Henson |Tish Rabe |Laura Hughes |Christina Geist
A solid choice for starting discussions on bullying, friendship, and kindness. In actor and mental health advocate Henson’s debut picture book, a young girl facing troubles at school takes her grandma’s advice. Lil TJ can’t wait to start school and make new friends. She has her own unique style, and she lets it shine on her first day. She participates eagerly, but at recess, a boy named Beau gives her a hard time.
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Jun 4, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
Children will be charmed by the furry friendships and fascinated by the visual details. A colony of prairie dogs is caught between security and risk-taking. Earl is afraid to leave the burrow. He keeps digging, while his five buddies entreat him to join them in the fresh air. As Earl warns against outside dangers—coyotes, an impending storm—they are oblivious to shadowy creatures lurking and the dark clouds gathering…until the pelting rain sends them scurrying.
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Apr 5, 2024 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
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.
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Dec 16, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Chloe Dominique |Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
Pleasant enough but not particularly original. Uplifting messages of positivity from the Today show anchor. Hope springs eternal, so the saying goes. Kotb agrees, here delivering to children the cheery news that hope lives inside all of them and that whatever they might wish for can be theirs. All they need is a sunny outlook, and the possibilities for happy outcomes are virtually endless.
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Jun 20, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Cara Devins |Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
by Cara Devins ; illustrated by K-Fai Steele ‧ A charming portrayal of a whimsical trickster librarian who knows how to get kids reading. Change can be challenging but good. Summer’s over, and the Belford Elementary students are thrilled to return to school. But when they learn that Ms. Stack, their librarian, has moved away, they hatch a plan to refuse to read with the new librarian, Ms. Bangle, until Ms. Stack returns.
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Jun 13, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
One dreary day in room 2B, a class of kids embraces a sandwich as instructor. On the first day of school, a light-skinned man carefully writes the words Mr. S on the blackboard and then, noticing that a tree has crashed on his car, dashes out to the parking lot, leaving behind a stack of papers and a sandwich.
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May 30, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Aisha Saeed |Tish Rabe |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
by Aisha Saeed ; illustrated by LeUyen Pham ‧ When Rumi moves to a brand-new coast, friendship feels hard to find. Although he is assigned the best seat in the room—right next to the class pets—brown-skinned Rumi still feels unwelcome and out of place in his new school. At recess, instead of playing with his diverse classmates, he sits beneath a willow tree in the schoolyard, dreaming of the cypress trees he loved back home in San Francisco.
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Mar 28, 2023 | 
kirkusreviews.com | Tish Rabe |Laura Hughes |Christina Geist |Tim Bowers
A PENELOPE REX BOOK by Ryan T. Higgins ; illustrated by Ryan T. Higgins ‧ You’d think a T. rex wouldn’t be afraid of anything. You’d be wrong. In her latest outing, Penelope Rex is terrified of Walter, the class goldfish. One might suppose a goldfish would be petrified of her, a large dinosaur with a disproportionately sized head.
