No one will accuse Graham (Benny, 1999, etc.) of excessive subtlety in this story of meeting life’s challenges when you are good and ready. Young Max is the son of superheroes Captain Lightning and Madam Thunderbolt and he is the grandson of superannuated superheroes. He, too, is destined for the superhero life—he even sports a cape and mask—but Max is short a card in the superhero deck: he can’t fly. His parents school him in the arts of hovering and swooping and hurtling; his grandfather notes challengingly that, “when I was his age, I got into trouble for leaving fingerprints on the ceiling lamp.” He gets teased at school for his decidedly un-superpowers. Still, Max remains firmly grounded, not willfully, but simply, because. Soon thereafter, Max witnesses a young bird being nudged from the nest. “This bird was not ready to fly.” Fortunately, another one is: Max flies to the baby bird’s rescue. From there it’s just an arm stroke to the jet stream. For good measure, Graham tosses in this comment from one of Max’s school chums: “Everyone’s different in some way, aren’t they?” These blatancies almost reduce the book to a cliché, though not quite. The rest of the text has a tender quality that can’t be overlooked, and the artwork alone—cartoony watercolors of saturated color, broken into numerous panels—will keep young eyes wholly absorbed. (Picture book. 4-7)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-7636-1138-7
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
Dedicated “to children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes,” this elemental debut depicts a bunny with big, looping ears demonstrating to a rather thick, unseen questioner (“Are you still standing around in that box?”) that what might look like an ordinary carton is actually a race car, a mountain, a burning building, a spaceship or anything else the imagination might dream up. Portis pairs each question and increasingly emphatic response with a playscape of Crockett Johnson–style simplicity, digitally drawn with single red and black lines against generally pale color fields. Appropriately bound in brown paper, this makes its profound point more directly than such like-themed tales as Marisabina Russo’s Big Brown Box (2000) or Dana Kessimakis Smith’s Brave Spaceboy (2005). (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-112322-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2006
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift.
A paean to teachers and their surrogates everywhere.
This gentle ode to a teacher’s skill at inspiring, encouraging, and being a role model is spoken, presumably, from a child’s viewpoint. However, the voice could equally be that of an adult, because who can’t look back upon teachers or other early mentors who gave of themselves and offered their pupils so much? Indeed, some of the self-aware, self-assured expressions herein seem perhaps more realistic as uttered from one who’s already grown. Alternatively, readers won’t fail to note that this small book, illustrated with gentle soy-ink drawings and featuring an adult-child bear duo engaged in various sedentary and lively pursuits, could just as easily be about human parent- (or grandparent-) child pairs: some of the softly colored illustrations depict scenarios that are more likely to occur within a home and/or other family-oriented setting. Makes sense: aren’t parents and other close family members children’s first teachers? This duality suggests that the book might be best shared one-on-one between a nostalgic adult and a child who’s developed some self-confidence, having learned a thing or two from a parent, grandparent, older relative, or classroom instructor.
A sweet, soft conversation starter and a charming gift. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-943200-08-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Compendium
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2017
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