Deftly intertwines observations on nature with moments in a child’s everyday life.
Seasons and swallows whirl through a year in a child’s rural life.
Favoring denim overalls and long brown hair with bangs, the light-skinned narrator romps as the swallows’ lives unfold. A small barn, house, and henhouse are the backdrop for the changes that 12 months bring to rolling farmland. Vivid language enlivens this quiet appreciation of avian life. In spring, the swallows’ nests “bloom with hungry chicks, their buttercup-bright mouths open wide”; the acrobatic birds “rocket,” “flit,” “slip,” “skim,” and “loop-the-loop.” The narrator, accompanied by a delighted dog, races downhill like the birds. In summer, dressed in a pink-checked swimsuit, the child jumps through a sprinkler while swallows fly through the spray, “their blue backs glittering.” In autumn the narrator is “cozy-sweatered”; the idling school bus “grumbles.” Winter brings snow and chickadees while the swallows are far south. In early spring, the “snuggle-sweatered” child’s rainboots pinch. Finally, the swallows reappear: “Their sharp wings flash like scissors as they slice through the sky,” and the narrator, “new-booted and sweater-free,” welcomes them. A refrain—“days slip by”—conveys the passage of time. Graceful barn swallows, with curved, tapering wings, pointed split tails, and aerial acrobatics, are a gift to a skilled illustrator, and Mason delivers. Compositions are varied, with close-ups and middle-distance portrayals, while the birds’ migration offers sky-view perspectives. Against a subdued palette, the blue swallows shimmer.
Deftly intertwines observations on nature with moments in a child’s everyday life. (swallow facts) (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: March 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781534112742
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on...
Continuing from their acclaimed Those Shoes (2007), Boelts and Jones entwine conversations on money, motives, and morality.
This second collaboration between author and illustrator is set within an urban multicultural streetscape, where brown-skinned protagonist Ruben wishes for a bike like his friend Sergio’s. He wishes, but Ruben knows too well the pressure his family feels to prioritize the essentials. While Sergio buys a pack of football cards from Sonny’s Grocery, Ruben must buy the bread his mom wants. A familiar lady drops what Ruben believes to be a $1 bill, but picking it up, to his shock, he discovers $100! Is this Ruben’s chance to get himself the bike of his dreams? In a fateful twist, Ruben loses track of the C-note and is sent into a panic. After finally finding it nestled deep in a backpack pocket, he comes to a sense of moral clarity: “I remember how it was for me when that money that was hers—then mine—was gone.” When he returns the bill to her, the lady offers Ruben her blessing, leaving him with double-dipped emotions, “happy and mixed up, full and empty.” Readers will be pleased that there’s no reward for Ruben’s choice of integrity beyond the priceless love and warmth of a family’s care and pride.
Embedded in this heartwarming story of doing the right thing is a deft examination of the pressures of income inequality on children. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-7636-6649-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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