Review by New York Times Review
AN exuberant imagination can be one of a child's best companions. Sometimes it can be too much of a good thing, though, brimming not only with fantasies and inventions but also with worries and worst-case scenarios. Few things make a child's imaginings go into overdrive like the first day of school, as Antoinette Portis delightfully captures in "Kindergarten Diary." Annalina begins her diary the day before school opens with the frantic declaration "I don't want to go to kindergarten!" Even outgoing Annalina clings to the familiar comforts of home, fearing the "Big School with big kids. What if they're mean?" Here she envisions herself as a tiny David, her hoodie pulled almost over her head, confronted by a Goliath of a big, mean boy. As in Portis's picture books "Not a Box" and "A Penguin Story," both honored with New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books Awards, theme is cleverly reiterated by design. The simplicity of the line drawings of "Not a Box" slyly takes the side of an inventive rabbit, who insists that the cardboard box he is playing with can be anything his imagination makes it, versus a dense adult questioner, who sees only the box. In "A Penguin Story," Edna, a melancholy penguin, desires more than the boring vista of black night, blue sea and white ice. She discovers the something different she longs for in the jazzy orange of a scientific campsite. The abundance of new experiences in "Kindergarten Diary" finds visual form in Portis's warmly comic mixed-media illustrations. Annalina's scrapbook diary (she's clearly a budding artist as well as memoirist) is evoked in collage-style pictures against a background of school notebook paper. Her observations are spot-on kindergartner-size reports from the front. Annalina decides she will at least approach her first day in style, envisioning an outfit of bathing suit, ballet skirt and her beloved cowboy boots. Resigned to the more conservative clothes chosen by her mother, she arrives and notes with satisfaction, "Hardly anybody cried" - in class that is; the parents huddled outside, visible through a window, look pretty teary. Annalina's first few days are a swirl of excitement and worry. Having hilariously conjured a scary Medusa-like teacher with graph-paper skin and hair made of snaking pencils, happily, once again, Annalina finds reality very different: her teacher turns out to be friendly and nice. Better still, the big kids aren't allowed near the monkey bars in the kindergarten playground. Of course, the days don't go by without hitches - after struggling to learn to print her name, Annalina decides to shorten it to Anna; and she has to be shushed by the teacher after she goes on too long at show and tell. But by the end of September, she is already imagining herself in first grade, this time in the role of a protective Goliath to a quivering kindergartner. We don't hear any more about that, though, because she is just "Too Busy to Write Anymore!" Sherie Posesorski's young adult novel, "Old Photographs," will be published in October.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 12, 2010]
Review by School Library Journal Review
PreS-K-Imaginative, spirited Annalina narrates a month of days in her life, beginning with the day before she starts kindergarten. What makes this book special is that the author doesn't deliver a long list of Annalina's misgivings, which often give young readers extra fodder to stress about. This child simply says that she likes preschool and thinks Big School might be filled with Big Kids ("What if they're mean?"). The next thing readers see, there she is in room 2K, where a diverse group of children smile, wave, and look a little sleepy. "Hardly anybody cried." In the following entries, the youngsters learn that the teacher isn't scary, that kindergarteners have their very own playground, that sharing is not only possible but also fun, and that nice things happen every day. The background for each page resembles the paper children use to practice their first writing-white with widely spaced, light blue straight and dotted lines. Realistic and gorgeously patterned collage items outlined in black are mingled with simple paintings to create an explosion of color, shape, and texture. The narrative and illustrations are gently funny and filled with little details and jokes, enabling children to find something new with each reading. Kindergarten Diary holds its own amid an impressive assortment of cheery salves for pre-K nerves.-Susan Weitz, formerly at Spencer-Van Etten School District, Spencer, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
The premise of a new kindergartner describing her worries in her own words could easily lead to the cuteness of kids saying the darnedest things. But Portis avoids such first-person pitfalls with the plain and plausible voice of Annalina ("I don't want to go to Big School with big kids") and by letting the illustrations do the emotional heavy lifting. Annalina's concerns that her teacher will be scary are accompanied by a fierce vision of a monster made of graph paper and numbers, spewing out the alphabet, crowned with a Medusa mane of writhing pencils. The usual anxieties of kindergarten-wearing the right clothes and speaking up at show-and-tell-are accompanied by more original microplots such as negotiating a three-way friendship, imaginative play involving the monkey bars, and a hair-cutting scene whose punchline lies in a picture. Portis gives her coloring book-style illustrations an extra tactile dimension with the selective use of collage. Small areas of fabric and background photographs also provide a "find the real thing" game for the young reader. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
