The King of Kindergarten by Derrick Barnes and Vanessa Brantley-Newton (2019).
This picture book veritably bubbles with confidence, joy, triumph, and whimsy and was created by a dream team: Derrick Barnes, best known for the incredible Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut and Vanessa Brantley-Newton, who has many gorgeous books under her belt. (The author and illustrator have collaborated before as well on Ruby and the Booker Boys.)
(Click image(s) to enlarge)
“The morning sun blares through your window like a million brass trumpets.
It sits and shines behind your head—like a crown.”
Using the metaphor of a king going off to their kingdom for the first time, a child embarks on a first day of kindergarten. They’re buoyed by encouraging parents, a friendly teacher, and the knowledge that they’ve got this. And it’s especially nice to see a Black child as the focus of this empowering off to school book.
The King of Kindergarten sets a child’s mind at ease. It says that school doesn’t have to be scary, especially when you’re meant to be there, you have a place, you’re on a mission of soaking it up, of learning, and of kindness too.
The illustrations are as vibrant and reassuring as the words. Kindergarten is absolutely fizzing with fun and color, shapes and swirls. And that sun appears on many pages, shining behind the main character’s head—”like a crown.” Spotting the crown (there from the first spread on the character’s PJ’s!) and sun motifs is part of this delightful experience.
Read this one before school starts to get any young reader “ready to reign” (and play and learn and share and nap).
Big thanks to Penguin for review copy and images!
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The crown, sun, and colorful swirls of the art in this book were our inspiration for a crown craft to match. I enlisted Jen Pino from Vroman’s (who once contributed some picture book gems to this blog) because she is a passionate book person, a super talented craft person, a bookstagrammer, and a friend.
Over to Jen!
Hi! First off, I want to say a huge thank you to Danielle Davis for letting me be a part of celebrating this joyous book! I am a huge Vanessa Bantley-Newton fan and when I heard that Danielle wanted to do a craft around The King of Kindergarten, I immediately had to join in. A little about me: I absolutely adore crafting, but am not the greatest with providing instruction. However, I also believe that there are many different ways to create, so for those who are like me, this one’s for you.
We are going to make a crown worthy of a royal kindergartener.
What you’ll need:
Scissors
Colored paper
Something round
Puffy paint and markers
Glue
Craft twine
Pencil
Tape
To start off, I took craft twine and strung it around the top of my head as a sort of measuring device. I guess you could also use a tape measure. I then cut the twine at the right place and taped it to the table where I was working. From there, I lined up all of my yellow paper, glueing each at the seams, until it appeared that I had enough. A ruler would also be helpful for this process, if you have one on hand. I didn’t and so I drew a line where the twine ended on my paper and folded over the excess to meet that line. Then I was able to draw a straight line up and use that to cut that excess off.
After I had the right length, I drew the outline of a crown and then erased all lines that I didn’t need. Because I didn’t have a ruler, I again used the straight edge of another piece of paper to draw a line where the bottom of the crown should be.Then I proceeded to cut out the crown and the length that would wrap around my head.
Next, I got to work on a sun. Vanessa Brantley-Newtwon illustrates all these gorgeous suns throughout the book and I wanted to make sure I had one on my crown. This would be for the back, so that the crown could be worn on either side. Use any circular object and trace the top to get the base of your sun. Then you can draw some sun flares to cut out as well. After I had everything cut out, I glued all the pieces of the sun together and used my puffy paint and markers to give it a smile and blushed cheeks.
For the front of the crown, I wanted to include lots of swirls and pops of color, like Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s, whenever the characters are thinking or imagining. I drew out some blue swirls and a red blob and glued them to my crown, cutting off all excess paper. Next, I took my gold puffy paint and swirled it over the crown with my fingers (make sure you have something underneath your work!). I then added some white puffy paint details, a rainbow with my markers, some cut-out letters and another green swirl. Finally, when everything was glued down and had time to set (make sure your paint has time to dry), I glued both ends of my crown together.
And that’s it!
Thank you for this royal crown for this royally delightful book, Jen!!
