Carling’s first solo outing recounts a day in the life of her family’s general store in the heart of Guatemala City. Her family has fled a war in China and opened the store, stocking Chinese goods that are a hit with the local Guatemalan, Mayan, and Chinese populations. It is in the details that Carling finds her memory sparked, as she recalls lottery ticket and candy sellers; lunchtime, when her brothers and sisters would come home from school and sled down their waxed tin roof; the afternoon storms; laundry flapping on the roof; the clic-clac of her father’s abacus as he tallied the day’s sales. Carling’s watercolors are also about those details: the shop brimming with goods, the Chinese touches throughout her home, her mother applying lipstick before returning to the store after lunch. Through these scenes run members of the expatriate Chinese community, filtering in and out of the store to chat and have tea or a plate of fish and hot peppers. The tone of the book is subdued, but this is a remarkable and affectionate story of one family’s resilience, of grace under fire, of how a life can flourish under trying circumstances, and how ordinary scenes can be bracketed and transformed by a child’s “The day begins like this” and “This is how the day ends.” (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: June 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8037-2044-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite.
Humpty Dumpty, classically portrayed as an egg, recounts what happened after he fell off the wall in Santat’s latest.
An avid ornithophile, Humpty had loved being atop a high wall to be close to the birds, but after his fall and reassembly by the king’s men, high places—even his lofted bed—become intolerable. As he puts it, “There were some parts that couldn’t be healed with bandages and glue.” Although fear bars Humpty from many of his passions, it is the birds he misses the most, and he painstakingly builds (after several papercut-punctuated attempts) a beautiful paper plane to fly among them. But when the plane lands on the very wall Humpty has so doggedly been avoiding, he faces the choice of continuing to follow his fear or to break free of it, which he does, going from cracked egg to powerful flight in a sequence of stunning spreads. Santat applies his considerable talent for intertwining visual and textual, whimsy and gravity to his consideration of trauma and the oft-overlooked importance of self-determined recovery. While this newest addition to Santat’s successes will inevitably (and deservedly) be lauded, younger readers may not notice the de-emphasis of an equally important part of recovery: that it is not compulsory—it is OK not to be OK.
A validating and breathtaking next chapter of a Mother Goose favorite. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62672-682-6
Page Count: 45
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A book that will make young dog-owners smile in recognition and confirm dogless readers' worst suspicions about the mayhem caused by pets, even winsome ones. Sam, who bears passing resemblance to an affable golden retriever, is praised for fetching the family newspaper, and goes on to fetch every other newspaper on the block. In the next story, only the children love Sam's swimming; he is yelled at by lifeguards and fishermen alike when he splashes through every watering hole he can find. Finally, there is woe to the entire family when Sam is bored and lonely for one long night. Boland has an essential message, captured in both both story and illustrations of this Easy-to-Read: Kids and dogs belong together, especially when it's a fun-loving canine like Sam. An appealing tale. (Picture book. 4-8)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8037-1530-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1996
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