An insightful portrayal of childhood loss and healing.
A girl struggling with grief receives help from a classmate and her father.
Lily has “a hole”—represented by a dusky violet circle on her T-shirt. Her sadness persists through festivities on her birthday, a beach trip, and more. Despite her empathetic father’s attempts to help, Lily’s hole grows as she withdraws from favorite pastimes and routines. At school, Thomas notices her distress and confides, “I have a hole too.” Thomas shows her the patches on his T-shirt. “They help you repair the hole.” Lily works on creating patches with Thomas at school, at home with Daddy, and alone. Lily’s and Thomas’ patches are symbols of things that can help us heal—pets, nature, music, and connections with others. Lehrhaupt sensitively handles a common emotional side effect of healing from grief: worrying that moving on means forgetting. “If I patch it completely, will I still remember?” asks Lily. “You won’t forget,” he reassures her. “But things will get better.” By showing Lily beginning to recover due in part to the help of a friend, Lehrhaupt demonstrates that kids have the ability to help themselves and others heal from loss. Gentle illustrations, often set against white backdrops, portray Lily and her dad with light brown skin and dark hair. Thomas has dark brown skin and curly hair; students in the classroom are diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An insightful portrayal of childhood loss and healing. (author’s note, “how to make a patch” activity) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-53411-122-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2022
Continuing to find inspiration in the work of Virginia Lee Burton, Munro Leaf and other illustrators of the past, Long (The Little Engine That Could, 2005) offers an aw-shucks friendship tale that features a small but hardworking tractor (“putt puff puttedy chuff”) with a Little Toot–style face and a big-eared young descendant of Ferdinand the bull who gets stuck in deep, gooey mud. After the big new yellow tractor, crowds of overalls-clad locals and a red fire engine all fail to pull her out, the little tractor (who had been left behind the barn to rust after the arrival of the new tractor) comes putt-puff-puttedy-chuff-ing down the hill to entice his terrified bovine buddy successfully back to dry ground. Short on internal logic but long on creamy scenes of calf and tractor either gamboling energetically with a gaggle of McCloskey-like geese through neutral-toned fields or resting peacefully in the shade of a gnarled tree (apple, not cork), the episode will certainly draw nostalgic adults. Considering the author’s track record and influences, it may find a welcome from younger audiences too. (Picture book. 5-8)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-25248-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2009
SEEN & HEARD
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound.
The titular cookie runs off the page at a bookstore storytime, pursued by young listeners and literary characters.
Following on 13 previous How To Catch… escapades, Wallace supplies sometimes-tortured doggerel and Elkerton, a set of helter-skelter cartoon scenes. Here the insouciant narrator scampers through aisles, avoiding a series of elaborate snares set by the racially diverse young storytime audience with help from some classic figures: “Alice and her mad-hat friends, / as a gift for my unbirthday, / helped guide me through the walls of shelves— / now I’m bound to find my way.” The literary helpers don’t look like their conventional or Disney counterparts in the illustrations, but all are clearly identified by at least a broad hint or visual cue, like the unnamed “wizard” who swoops in on a broom to knock over a tower labeled “Frogwarts.” Along with playing a bit fast and loose with details (“Perhaps the boy with the magic beans / saved me with his cow…”) the author discards his original’s lip-smacking climax to have the errant snack circling back at last to his book for a comfier sort of happily-ever-after.
A brisk if bland offering for series fans, but cleverer metafictive romps abound. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-7282-0935-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
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