The difference pictures of a certain kind make to a text is graphically demonstrated here. Accompanying the song of a little bird "inside" Sarah—through summer, fall, and winter, and into the next spring—are not moody evocations but poster-like crystallizations, in the nursery-mode of the late-Twenties/early-Thirties, but with reflections of a latter-day sensibility in the space-filling composition and (sometimes) stagey design. The merest snatch of text brings an emblematic, frame-able picture—as when we see, with "The little bird sang all winter," a fat rabbit hunched down in the snow, and two smaller rabbits snuggled in an underground nest. Meanwhile, just winging into sight, is the little bird—who somehow turns up in picture after picture, even as his song is always inside Sarah's head. What he is singing is a song of the seasons—"of snowflakes and frosty windows and the sting of the wind"; "of silky new grass and the smell of wet earth"—which Sarah's parents can't hear; and then, in the spring, she meets a friend who hears the song too. With the strongly realized pictures, the melodious text becomes, indeed, a sort of background melody—which is one perfectly valid way for youngsters to take in a picture book. It's a safe bet, too, that they'll remember Tufari's decorative patterns and embellishments as what the song was all about.
Pub Date: April 1, 1982
ISBN: 0688008178
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Broccoli: No way is James going to eat broccoli. “It’s disgusting,” says James. Well then, James, says his father, let’s consider the alternatives: some wormy dirt, perhaps, some stinky socks, some pre-chewed gum? James reconsiders the broccoli, but—milk? “Blech,” says James. Right, says his father, who needs strong bones? You’ll be great at hide-and-seek, though not so great at baseball and kickball and even tickling the dog’s belly. James takes a mouthful. So it goes through lumpy oatmeal, mushroom lasagna and slimy eggs, with James’ father parrying his son’s every picky thrust. And it is fun, because the father’s retorts are so outlandish: the lasagna-making troll in the basement who will be sent back to the rat circus, there to endure the rodent’s vicious bites; the uneaten oatmeal that will grow and grow and probably devour the dog that the boy won’t be able to tickle any longer since his bones are so rubbery. Schneider’s watercolors catch the mood of gentle ribbing, the looks of bewilderment and surrender and the deadpanned malarkey. It all makes James’ father’s last urging—“I was just going to say that you might like them if you tried them”—wholly fresh and unexpected advice. (Early reader. 5-9)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-14956-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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
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