Kids can use the word patterns of this easy story to discuss their own experiences.
Follow a young child who travels to school on the New York City subway and goes about the day.
In short phrases that emphasize directional words—highlighted in different colors—the unnamed narrator gives readers a taste of daily urban experience. The narrator goes “out the door” and through the neighborhood with a parent. Together they approach the stairs “outside the station,” stand “at the booth,” and then go “beyond the turnstile” to the subway train. “Amid the crowd” the two wait, the red-jacketed kid with brown skin and black hair and the parent with the same coloring. Their fellow commuters are diverse. They travel a few stops and exit “into daylight,” going “around the corner” and “inside my school.” Teachers and students are diverse, and one person uses a wheelchair. The school day passes, and the process of going home begins, but the return trip and the evening at home with both parents is compressed into a series of thumbnail panels in one double-page spread. The collage illustrations vary perspective, sometimes showing the travelers clearly while challenging readers to look for them at other times. Two subway scenes are particular striking, one of the travelers waiting from the opposite platform and the other a cutaway of the train passing below the streets. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 25% of actual size.)
Kids can use the word patterns of this easy story to discuss their own experiences. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4644-5
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Low grade.
A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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