![]() ![]() The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. 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. 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. Instructive but punctuated with excitement-a rousing read-aloud work. The skillful digital and acrylic illustrations by Holm are appropriately vibrant, fun, and varied. Haughee’s lesson goes down easy, with plenty of creative anarchy for kids to enjoy and sentences that beg to be vigorously read aloud. All the fun you could have.” Finally, Pling is recalled to end things on a happy note-“but no getting carried away.” Children learning about punctuation can get a good sense of how to use the exclamation point through the contrasting situations that do and don’t call for emphasis. Pling, a smiling exclamation point with an expressive face, must follow an unnamed narrator’s one rule: “He can only be in a book two times.” But dramatic events all around him just seem to call for Pling, from a sudden rainstorm to Baby Goat’s wonderful birthday party, which keeps erupting into action: “Presents! Disco light! Broken chairs! Roller skates! Ice cream! Chewed-up hats! Hot dogs! Confetti!” When the narrator decides that disobedient Pling’s services are no longer necessary, the party becomes glum and lifeless, with dispirited periods rather than exclamation points: “So much fun. An exclamation point is too exuberant to follow the rules in this picture book.
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