A bright and bubbly outing with an infectiously cheerful protagonist.
A brown-skinned girl with straight, black hair who lives in what looks to be the American Southwest lists the “wonderful sights I love to see.”
From rainbows and clouds to birthday-cake candles and jelly beans, the unnamed narrator celebrates what she sees. Most are natural phenomena—dewdrops, an earthworm, flowers in spring—but other choices reveal an imaginative bent: “Reflections in a silver spoon. / The man who’s winking in the moon.” Freeman places Hudson’s narrator in a desert landscape with saguaros and weathered buttes. One quietly dramatic double-page spread depicts the narrator from above as she crouches on the parched earth, studying “An army of ants on the move. / A blade of grass in a sandy groove.” Given this concrete sense of place, the abrupt transition from one page to an ocean beach and from another to the unlikely image of snowflakes drifting down onto the desert from a partly cloudy sky are incongruous. The child’s specific ethnicity is not provided, but an image of the narrator’s brother hiding behind an earthenware jar and another of the child with an adult, both wrapped in a bright, woven blanket, hint at an indigenous heritage. A further image of the child in a thoroughly modern bathtub makes clear that this child and her family are thriving in the present day. Series companion Friends I Love to Keep, by Wade Hudson and also illustrated by Freeman, publishes simultaneously and depicts an energetic black girl in a comfortable, middle-class setting with a multiracial group of friends.
A bright and bubbly outing with an infectiously cheerful protagonist. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60349-009-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Marimba Books
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it.
A succession of animal dads do their best to teach their young to say “Dada” in this picture-book vehicle for Fallon.
A grumpy bull says, “DADA!”; his calf moos back. A sad-looking ram insists, “DADA!”; his lamb baas back. A duck, a bee, a dog, a rabbit, a cat, a mouse, a donkey, a pig, a frog, a rooster, and a horse all fail similarly, spread by spread. A final two-spread sequence finds all of the animals arrayed across the pages, dads on the verso and children on the recto. All the text prior to this point has been either iterations of “Dada” or animal sounds in dialogue bubbles; here, narrative text states, “Now everybody get in line, let’s say it together one more time….” Upon the turn of the page, the animal dads gaze round-eyed as their young across the gutter all cry, “DADA!” (except the duckling, who says, “quack”). Ordóñez's illustrations have a bland, digital look, compositions hardly varying with the characters, although the pastel-colored backgrounds change. The punch line fails from a design standpoint, as the sudden, single-bubble chorus of “DADA” appears to be emanating from background features rather than the baby animals’ mouths (only some of which, on close inspection, appear to be open). It also fails to be funny.
Plotless and pointless, the book clearly exists only because its celebrity author wrote it. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-00934-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
