Uninspiring.
A child living in a surveillance state uncovers another way of life.
Bix and her family live under the constant supervision of the Eyes, floating yellow orbs with robotic arms and complete control over the daily lives of the inhabitants of this futuristic, unnamed abstract city. Through short, straightforward prose and comic panels depicting a space age–esque setting, readers learn that Bix dislikes the Eyes’ assistance and surveillance, occasionally feels lonely, and hates her Eye-assigned reading. One day, she follows a rat underground and discovers the ruins of a very different city—one that appears much like one in which readers may live, albeit abandoned. There, she finds a library, a museum, and a grocery store—and evidence of a life before the Eyes, even the idea that once not everyone liked the Eyes. After a few days, she misses her family and returns to the city above with her new rat companion and a mountain of books. Everyone but the Eyes rejoices, and Bix begins a reading revolution that ends with the destruction of the Eyes. In this half-baked Nineteen-Eighty-Four–meets–City of Ember for kids, Yaccarino’s choppy writing leaves much to be desired. Though the text is simple, the concepts seem to be aimed at an older age range; the result is hardly the life-changing reading Bix finds underground. Bix and most of the city’s inhabitants are purple-skinned; other characters have skin the white of the page. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Uninspiring. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-66265-089-5
Page Count: 72
Publisher: minedition
Review Posted Online: July 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A close encounter of the best kind.
Left behind when the space bus departs, a child discovers that the moon isn’t as lifeless as it looks.
While the rest of the space-suited class follows the teacher like ducklings, one laggard carrying crayons and a sketchbook sits down to draw our home planet floating overhead, falls asleep, and wakes to see the bus zooming off. The bright yellow bus, the gaggle of playful field-trippers, and even the dull gray boulders strewn over the equally dull gray lunar surface have a rounded solidity suggestive of Plasticine models in Hare’s wordless but cinematic scenes…as do the rubbery, one-eyed, dull gray creatures (think: those stress-busting dolls with ears that pop out when squeezed) that emerge from the regolith. The mutual shock lasts but a moment before the lunarians eagerly grab the proffered crayons to brighten the bland gray setting with silly designs. The creatures dive into the dust when the bus swoops back down but pop up to exchange goodbye waves with the errant child, who turns out to be an olive-skinned kid with a mop of brown hair last seen drawing one of their new friends with the one crayon—gray, of course—left in the box. Body language is expressive enough in this debut outing to make a verbal narrative superfluous.
A close encounter of the best kind. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4253-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary...
Refined, spit-spot–tidy illustrations infuse a spare adaptation of the 1934 classic with proper senses of decorum and wonder.
Novesky leaves out much—the Bird Woman, Adm. Boom, that ethnically problematic world tour, even Mr. and Mrs. Banks—but there’s still plenty going on. Mary Poppins introduces Jane and Michael (their twin younger sibs are mentioned but seem to be left at home throughout) to the Match-Man and the buoyant Mr. Wigg, lets them watch Mrs. Corry and her daughters climb tall ladders to spangle the night sky with gilt stars, and takes them to meet the zoo animals (“Bird and beast, star and stone—we are all one,” says the philosophical bear). At last, when the wind changes, she leaves them with an “Au revoir!” (“Which means, Dear Reader, ‘to meet again.’ ”) Slender and correct, though with dangling forelocks that echo and suggest the sweeping curls of wind that bring her in and carry her away, Mary Poppins takes the role of impresario in Godbout’s theatrically composed scenes, bearing an enigmatic smile throughout but sharing with Jane and Michael (and even the parrot-headed umbrella) an expression of wide-eyed, alert interest as she shepherds them from one marvelous encounter to the next. The Corrys have brown skin; the rest of the cast presents white.
Lovely and evocative, just the thing to spark an interest in the original and its sequels—and the upcoming film sequel, Mary Poppins Returns, which opens in December 2018. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-328-91677-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: HMH Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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