A salutary, mission-driven tribute to hard work and persistence.
There are many ways to meet a challenge, and they all don’t have to come from inside.
Two of the great fruits of McGillivray’s story are that it applies to so many people and it is true. True stories let us know that our dreams really can come true. Dave is a small white kid, and the games for big bruisers are just out of his league. But then he catches the running bug. Dave has dreams of standing tall on the podium, but his first marathon, at 17, is a bust (he’d only been training for a year and hadn’t touched 26.2 miles). Dave is crestfallen, but his grandpa counsels, “You didn’t fail. You discovered something…you discovered that big dreams don’t just come true. They take work, hard work.” Well, Grandpa isn’t there to see it, but Dave does train hard, and although he breaks down on his second try, he also gets up with the memory of hard work and completes the marathon. In a wonderful turnaround, today Dave is race director of the Boston Marathon. “And guess what? I always come in last.” It’s a consciously inspiring story, straightforwardly told with the help of Feeher. The mostly-white cast of Himler’s rather washed-out watercolor illustrations says a lot about how the sport has grown both more international and more diverse.
A salutary, mission-driven tribute to hard work and persistence. (map) (Picture book/memoir. 4-8)Pub Date: March 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61930-618-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Nomad Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Enthusiastic and direct, this paean has a lovely ring to it.
Former National Youth Poet Laureate Gorman invites girls to raise their voices and make a difference.
“Today, we finally have a say,” proclaims the first-person plural narration as three girls (one presents Black, another is brown-skinned, and the third is light-skinned) pass one another marshmallows on a stick around a campfire. In Wise’s textured, almost three-dimensional illustrations, the trio traverse fantastical, often abstract landscapes, playing, demonstrating, eating, and even flying, while confident rhymes sing their praises and celebrate collective female victories. The phrase “LIBERATION. FREEDOM. RESPECT” appears on a protest sign that bookends their journey. Simple and accessible, the rhythmic visual storytelling presents an optimistic vision of young people working toward a better world. Sometimes family members or other diverse comrades surround the girls, emphasizing that power comes from community. Gorman is careful to specify that “some of us go by she / And some of us go by they.” She affirms, too, that each person is “a different shape and size,” though the art doesn’t show much variation in body type. Characters also vary in ability. Real-life figures emerge as the girls dream of past luminaries such as author Octavia Butler and activist Marsha P. Johnson, along with present-day role models including poet and journalist Plestia Alaqad and athlete Sha’carri Richardson; silhouettes stand in for heroines as yet unknown. Imagining that “we are where change is going” is hopeful indeed.
Enthusiastic and direct, this paean has a lovely ring to it. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780593624180
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute.
Readers bid farewell to a beloved canine character.
Momo is—or was—an adorable and very photogenic border collie owned by author Knapp. The many readers who loved him in the previous half-dozen books are in for a shock with this one. “Momo had died” is the stark reality—and there are no photographs of him here. Instead, Momo has been replaced by a flat cartoonish pastiche with strange, staring round white eyes, inserted into some of Knapp’s photography (which remains appealing, insofar as it can be discerned under the mixed media). Previous books contained few or no words. Unfortunately, virtuosity behind a lens does not guarantee mastery of verse. The art here is accompanied by words that sometimes rhyme but never find a workable or predictable rhythm (“We’d fetch and we’d catch, / we’d run and we’d jump. Every day we found new / games to play”). It’s a pity, because the subject—a pet’s death—is an important one to address with children. Of course, Momo isn’t gone; he can still be found “everywhere” in memories. But alas, he can be found here only in the crude depictions of the darling dog so well known from the earlier books.
A well-meaning but lackluster tribute. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781683693864
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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