Readers’ perspective is from below them, forcing the eye up and into the beautiful night “above the tired and hopeful earth,” a pitch-perfect pairing with DiCamillo’s poetic text. Perhaps the most powerful illustration shows the group hand in hand looking up at the stars. Van Dusen’s distinct rosy-cheeked characters give life to the uniquely named neighbors.
In any other hands, this story might be too saccharine, but thanks to DiCamillo’s quirky and endearing characters and subtle use of scene, it feels like a bit of Christmas magic. The quartet’s loud and “not very musical” version of “Deck the Halls” brings out the neighbors for an accordion concert and an impromptu merry feast. Though Stella, who lives next door to the Watsons, is determined to spread spur-of-the-moment Christmas spirit, when she goes door to door asking for neighbors to go caroling with her, no one is willing except for Mercy, General Washington the cat, and Maybelline the horse. 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.ĭiCamillo and illustrator Van Dusen collaborate again, this time on a holiday story that includes their beloved porcine heroine, Mercy Watson. 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 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 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. Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol. Though not a standout, this book fills a niche for those seeking titles dealing with this particular issue of character education
While the book does not address the issue at the heart of much tattling-the perception of injustice-it does offer some simple, easy-to-remember rhymes to help guide children toward appropriate sharing of concerns. Tattling is here defined as any concern that does not meet the following criteria: “If a friend is sick, hurt, or in harm’s way, / Then telling someone is OKAY.” Miles struggles to determine which events over the course of the week must be shared with an adult, including an accident with his little sister back at home. Snitcher challenges her charges to a “Tattle Battle,” in which the team with the fewest tattles at the end of the week wins. Tattle-telling has become an issue in the classroom, and Mrs. Here, Miles McHale is a member of a classroom populated by softly illustrated anthropomorphic wild animals of diverse species led by a giraffe with the Dickensian name of Mrs. Jones’ newest picture book continues in the vein of some of her previous work with social-emotional development ( Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker, 2014, etc.). The titular little chick learns an important lesson about what behaviors need to be reported and which to just let slide.
0 kommentar(er)
