Too didactic to be much fun but certainly pretty.
Find out why mermaids have tails.
A dark-skinned boy named Theodore rows his boat around a pastel-colored world filled with anthropomorphic sea creatures. He brings a hefty selection of fish back to his skylit home so he can watch “the way their scales shimmer…in the sunlight like jewels.” Bright flecks in the illustrations provide a dreamy, enchanted quality—the book’s biggest strength. When Theodore captures a mermaid—a tiny humanoid creatures with legs, surrounded by a clear shell—a booming voice tells him that “she belongs to the ocean,” but he ignores it. Calling the mermaid Oceanne, he drops her into a suffocating, filterless fishbowl. As the mermaid sickens and her shell breaks, scenes darken and lose saturation. If an omnipotent voice hadn't already broadcast the story’s moral, Theodore and readers might now put it together themselves in a satisfying exercise of agency and meaning-making. Instead, the loud voice repeatedly insists that Oceanne “belongs to the ocean” until Theodore finally brings her back. The sea is subdued and empty, but eventually fish after fish reappears, each giving Oceanne a sparkly scale until she revives and grows a tail. “All mermaids have tails,” the narrative declares, “to remind us of something very important”: that animals belong in the wild. While it’s an important lesson, the preachy narrative talks down to readers rather than engaging them.
Too didactic to be much fun but certainly pretty. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: May 7, 2024
ISBN: 9780711295315
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
Sadly, the storytelling runs aground.
A little red sleigh has big Christmas dreams.
Although the detailed, full-color art doesn’t anthropomorphize the protagonist (which readers will likely identify as a sled and not a sleigh), a close third-person text affords the object thoughts and feelings while assigning feminine pronouns. “She longed to become Santa’s big red sleigh,” reads an early line establishing the sleigh’s motivation to leave her Christmas-shop home for the North Pole. Other toys discourage her, but she perseveres despite creeping self-doubt. A train and truck help the sleigh along, and when she wishes she were big, fast, and powerful like them, they offer encouragement and counsel patience. When a storm descends after the sleigh strikes out on her own, an unnamed girl playing in the snow brings her to a group of children who all take turns riding the sleigh down a hill. When the girl brings her home, the sleigh is crestfallen she didn’t reach the North Pole. A convoluted happily-ever-after ending shows a note from Santa that thanks the sleigh for giving children joy and invites her to the North Pole next year. “At last she understood what she was meant to do. She would build her life up spreading joy, one child at a time.” Will she leave the girl’s house to be gifted to other children? Will she stay and somehow also reach ever more children? Readers will be left wondering. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 31.8% of actual size.)
Sadly, the storytelling runs aground. (Picture book. 3-6)Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-72822-355-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sourcebooks Wonderland
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
A wandering effort, happy but pointless.
The perfect book for kids who love dragons and mild tacos.
Rubin’s story starts with an incantatory edge: “Hey, kid! Did you know that dragons love tacos? They love beef tacos and chicken tacos. They love really big gigantic tacos and tiny little baby tacos as well.” The playing field is set: dragons, tacos. As a pairing, they are fairly silly, and when the kicker comes in—that dragons hate spicy salsa, which ignites their inner fireworks—the silliness is sillier still. Second nature, after all, is for dragons to blow flames out their noses. So when the kid throws a taco party for the dragons, it seems a weak device that the clearly labeled “totally mild” salsa comes with spicy jalapenos in the fine print, prompting the dragons to burn down the house, resulting in a barn-raising at which more tacos are served. Harmless, but if there is a parable hidden in the dragon-taco tale, it is hidden in the unlit deep, and as a measure of lunacy, bridled or unbridled, it doesn’t make the leap into the outer reaches of imagination. Salmieri’s artwork is fitting, with a crabbed, ethereal line work reminiscent of Peter Sís, but the story does not offer it enough range.
A wandering effort, happy but pointless. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-8037-3680-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
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