Though it treads perilously close to inspirational blandness, this book will serve to comfort those seeking friends of their...
The concept of friendship earns itself another tribute picture book, this time with crisp, stunning photographs to match.
“There, in the crowd, is someone— / who likes the things you like.” Brief text reassures readers that there’s a friend somewhere out there for everybody and then lists all the things such a pal could do as well as the additional benefits of what such a friendship would bring. All told, the text is a pep talk to the lonely, promising great companionship to come. Its near platitudes are ameliorated by the book’s eye-popping photographs of children and adults in 18 different countries. The backmatter includes a map of the world indicating where the photos were taken, quotes on friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson, C.S. Lewis, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and a note to parents and caregivers that includes Web resources with “ideas on helping your kids make friends” as well as “resources on bullying.” The result is a book that seems to hope to serve a very specific type of reader—the lonely kind—while also reaching for universality. Perhaps surprisingly, in the end it works, the world photography going a long way toward supporting its overarching goal.
Though it treads perilously close to inspirational blandness, this book will serve to comfort those seeking friends of their own and inspire others to expand their friendship circles. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4263-1905-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some...
With a little help from his audience, a young storyteller gets over a solid case of writer’s block in this engaging debut.
Despite the (sometimes creatively spelled) examples produced by all his classmates and the teacher’s assertion that “Stories are everywhere!” Ralph can’t get past putting his name at the top of his paper. One day, lying under the desk in despair, he remembers finding an inchworm in the park. That’s all he has, though, until his classmates’ questions—“Did it feel squishy?” “Did your mom let you keep it?” “Did you name it?”—open the floodgates for a rousing yarn featuring an interloping toddler, a broad comic turn and a dramatic rescue. Hanlon illustrates the episode with childlike scenes done in transparent colors, featuring friendly-looking children with big smiles and widely spaced button eyes. The narrative text is printed in standard type, but the children’s dialogue is rendered in hand-lettered printing within speech balloons. The episode is enhanced with a page of elementary writing tips and the tantalizing titles of his many subsequent stories (“When I Ate Too Much Spaghetti,” “The Scariest Hamster,” “When the Librarian Yelled Really Loud at Me,” etc.) on the back endpapers.
An engaging mix of gentle behavior modeling and inventive story ideas that may well provide just the push needed to get some budding young writers off and running. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2012
ISBN: 978-0761461807
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
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An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education.
A young visionary describes his ideal school: “Perfectly planned and impeccably clean. / On a scale, 1 to 10, it’s more like 15!”
In keeping with the self-indulgently fanciful lines of If I Built a Car (2005) and If I Built a House (2012), young Jack outlines in Seussian rhyme a shiny, bright, futuristic facility in which students are swept to open-roofed classes in clear tubes, there are no tests but lots of field trips, and art, music, and science are afterthoughts next to the huge and awesome gym, playground, and lunchroom. A robot and lots of cute puppies (including one in a wheeled cart) greet students at the door, robotically made-to-order lunches range from “PB & jelly to squid, lightly seared,” and the library’s books are all animated popups rather than the “everyday regular” sorts. There are no guards to be seen in the spacious hallways—hardly any adults at all, come to that—and the sparse coed student body features light- and dark-skinned figures in roughly equal numbers, a few with Asian features, and one in a wheelchair. Aside from the lack of restrooms, it seems an idyllic environment—at least for dog-loving children who prefer sports and play over quieter pursuits.
An all-day sugar rush, putting the “fun” back into, er, education. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55291-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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