A dainty dish that needed just a bit more proof in the pudding when it comes to historicity.
Inventive verse and playful art combine in an origin story of Mother Goose herself.
Frontmatter offers possible backstories about the enigmatic Mother Goose, leading to an introduction of one Elizabeth Foster who lived in Colonial-era Boston and married widower Isaac Goose. Raschka’s poetic text provides a biographical sketch of Elizabeth Foster Goose, within which he thematically arranges well-known Mother Goose rhymes. For example, he introduces Elizabeth and Isaac as they fall in love and marry, accompanying that part of his text with nursery rhymes about courtship and matrimony. The text also explains that between stepchildren and those born to the couple, Elizabeth was Mother Goose to 14 children. Readers must connect the dots to deduce that this real woman may have originated the rhymes now known to generations, and it’s a shame the text fails to explicitly illuminate historical context. His art published posthumously, Radunsky’s gouache-and-pencil illustrations of the Goose family, other people, and anthropomorphic animals have a jovial, sketchy quality befitting the lively cadence of Raschka’s verse and the familiar nursery rhymes. Unfortunately, the depiction of what appears as an all-white world of Goose’s Colonial Boston offers ahistorical exclusivity. Ultimately, it’s a book as playful and cryptic as many a Mother Goose rhyme.
A dainty dish that needed just a bit more proof in the pudding when it comes to historicity. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7523-3
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
Wow.
The stories of the births of the universe, the planet Earth, and a human child are told in this picture book.
Bauer begins with cosmic nothing: “In the dark / in the deep, deep dark / a speck floated / invisible as thought / weighty as God.” Her powerful words build the story of the creation of the universe, presenting the science in poetic free verse. First, the narrative tells of the creation of stars by the Big Bang, then the explosions of some of those stars, from which dust becomes the matter that coalesces into planets, then the creation of life on Earth: a “lucky planet…neither too far / nor too near…its yellow star…the Sun.” Holmes’ digitally assembled hand-marbled paper-collage illustrations perfectly pair with the text—in fact the words and illustrations become an inseparable whole, as together they both delineate and suggest—the former telling the story and the latter, with their swirling colors suggestive of vast cosmos, contributing the atmosphere. It’s a stunning achievement to present to readers the factual events that created the birth of the universe, the planet Earth, and life on Earth with such an expressive, powerful creativity of words paired with illustrations so evocative of the awe and magic of the cosmos. But then the story goes one brilliant step further and gives the birth of a child the same beginning, the same sense of magic, the same miracle.
Wow. (Picture book. 3-8)Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7636-7883-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams.
Readers learn about a keystone species and the habitat they create.
In a “House That Jack Built” style (though minus the cumulative repetition), Sonenshine introduces children to beavers. Beginning with a beaver who’s just gnawed down a willow near their lodge, the author moves on to the dam that blocks the stream and protects their domed home and then to the yearlings that are working to repair it with sticks and mud. Muskrats and a musk turtle take advantage of the safety of the beavers’ lodge, while Coyote tries (and fails) to breach it. Then the book turns to other animals that enjoy the benefits of the pond the beavers have created: goose, ducklings, heron, moose. While the beavers aren’t in all these illustrations, evidence of them is. And then suddenly a flood takes out both the dam and the beavers’ lodge. So, the beavers move upstream to find a new spot to dam and build again, coming full circle back to the beginning of the book. Hunter’s ink-and–colored pencil illustrations have a scratchy style that is well suited to the beavers’ pelts, their watery surroundings, and the other animals that share their habitat. Careful observers will be well rewarded by the tiny details. Beavers are mostly nocturnal, which isn’t always faithfully depicted by Hunter. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A boon for beaver storytimes or young naturalists living near beaver streams. (beaver facts, glossary, further resources) (Informational picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5362-1868-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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