A gentle and playful celebration of difference and self-discovery.
A square who loves to roll instead of build surprises his community with his new talent and gains confidence in himself.
In Sam the square’s world of shapes, everyone has a job to do. Stable squares like Sam help construct towers and bridges, while speedy circles zoom from place to place as wheels on trains and trucks. Dissatisfied with his role in life, Sam decides to try something bold. He learns to roll and discovers joy by being himself. Debut author Jackson uses the familiar concept of shapes as a metaphor to discuss difference and identity. Bright and active digital illustrations accompany the text, expressing Sam’s love for movement. Although the initial language that Sam doesn’t “feel like a square” despite his “four pointy corners” paired with a depiction of Sam as a circle inside a square suggests a born-in-the-wrong-body narrative, Sam ultimately claims his shape and finds his own way to label himself. His corners become subtly rounder after the first time he rolls. In contrast to similar titles, such as Michael Hall’s Red: A Crayon’s Story (2015), Sam’s community encourages his behavior. The other shapes are excited to see a square roll, and the circles welcome him into rolling jobs. This positive support strengthens the underlying message that exploring identity and self-expression brings happiness.
A gentle and playful celebration of difference and self-discovery. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62414-770-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Page Street
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Safe to creep on by.
Carle’s famous caterpillar expresses its love.
In three sentences that stretch out over most of the book’s 32 pages, the (here, at least) not-so-ravenous larva first describes the object of its love, then describes how that loved one makes it feel before concluding, “That’s why… / I[heart]U.” There is little original in either visual or textual content, much of it mined from The Very Hungry Caterpillar. “You are… / …so sweet,” proclaims the caterpillar as it crawls through the hole it’s munched in a strawberry; “…the cherry on my cake,” it says as it perches on the familiar square of chocolate cake; “…the apple of my eye,” it announces as it emerges from an apple. Images familiar from other works join the smiling sun that shone down on the caterpillar as it delivers assurances that “you make… / …the sun shine brighter / …the stars sparkle,” and so on. The book is small, only 7 inches high and 5 ¾ inches across when closed—probably not coincidentally about the size of a greeting card. While generations of children have grown up with the ravenous caterpillar, this collection of Carle imagery and platitudinous sentiment has little of his classic’s charm. The melding of Carle’s caterpillar with Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE on the book’s cover, alas, draws further attention to its derivative nature.
Safe to creep on by. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-448-48932-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As ephemeral as a valentine.
Daywalt and Jeffers’ wandering crayons explore love.
Each double-page spread offers readers a vision of one of the anthropomorphic crayons on the left along with the statement “Love is [color].” The word love is represented by a small heart in the appropriate color. Opposite, childlike crayon drawings explain how that color represents love. So, readers learn, “love is green. / Because love is helpful.” The accompanying crayon drawing depicts two alligators, one holding a recycling bin and the other tossing a plastic cup into it, offering readers two ways of understanding green. Some statements are thought-provoking: “Love is white. / Because sometimes love is hard to see,” reaches beyond the immediate image of a cat’s yellow eyes, pink nose, and black mouth and whiskers, its white face and body indistinguishable from the paper it’s drawn on, to prompt real questions. “Love is brown. / Because sometimes love stinks,” on the other hand, depicted by a brown bear standing next to a brown, squiggly turd, may provoke giggles but is fundamentally a cheap laugh. Some of the color assignments have a distinctly arbitrary feel: Why is purple associated with the imagination and pink with silliness? Fans of The Day the Crayons Quit (2013) hoping for more clever, metaliterary fun will be disappointed by this rather syrupy read.
As ephemeral as a valentine. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5247-9268-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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