JUST LIKE I WANTED

Name: JUST LIKE I WANTED
Author: Elinoar Keller
ISBN: 978-0-8028-5453-7

by Elinoar Keller & Naama Peleg Segal ; illustrated by Aya Gordon-Noy ; translated by Annette Appel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 24, 2015

A fine topic with compelling collage, hampered by poor verse.

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While making a drawing, a girl adapts mistakes into new subject matter.

This first-person narrator sets out to create “a picture that’s perfect in every way.” Perfection, however, is elusive. Coloring inside the lines is hard, and when results vary from what she intended, she’s upset. She solves this, each time, by changing her content to match the new lines. The theme of flexibility is encouraging. Her subject matter progresses from “a girl who’s clean and neat”—a boring start—to a piano, a horse with pockets who gallop-flies through a land of desserts, and a pirate ship. Gordon-Noy’s mixed-media illustrations use pencil, paint, and marker over a dynamic layering of papers: lined notebook paper, graph paper, doilies, photos, and paper with music scales and notes. Some papers are crumpled; some have an off-white wash over them. The artist/protagonist is drawn in the same style as everything else, making the character one with her art. The fatal flaw is the verse. Rhymes are missed (dreams/cream; around/down), description stilted (“She is having so much fun”), and scansion uneven (“That makes me so mad! Why can’t I stay in the lines? / Should I rip up this picture and begin one more time?”). Oddly, the girl seems more concerned with coloring within the lines that she herself has drawn than with drawing representationally, which feels developmentally off.

A fine topic with compelling collage, hampered by poor verse. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-8028-5453-7

Page Count: 26

Publisher: Eerdmans

Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S

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WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES, MR. BROWN?

by Justin Rhodes ; illustrated by Heather Dickinson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 2023

Pedestrian.

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Mr. Brown can’t help with farm chores because his shoes are missing—a common occurrence in his household and likely in many readers’ as well.

Children will be delighted that the titular Mr. Brown is in fact a child. After Mr. Brown looks in his closet and sorts through his other family members’ shoes with no luck, his father and his siblings help him search the farm. Eventually—after colorful pages that enable readers to spot footwear hiding—the family gives up on their hunt, and Mr. Brown asks to be carried around for the chores. He rides on his father’s shoulders as Papa gets his work done, as seen on a double-page spread of vignettes. The resolution is more of a lesson for the adult readers than for children, a saccharine moment where father and son express their joy that the missing shoes gave them the opportunity for togetherness—with advice for other parents to appreciate those fleeting moments themselves. Though the art is bright and cheerful, taking advantage of the setting, it occasionally is misaligned with the text (for example, the text states that Mr. Brown is wearing his favorite green shirt while the illustration is of a shirt with wide stripes of white and teal blue, which could confuse readers at the point where they’re trying to figure out which family member is Mr. Brown). The family is light-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Pedestrian. (Picture book. 4-7)

Pub Date: March 14, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-5460-0389-2

Page Count: 32

Publisher: WorthyKids/Ideals

Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022

Categories:

CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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THE GINGERBREAD MAN LOOSE IN THE SCHOOL

by Laura Murray & illustrated by Mike Lowery ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2011

Teachers looking for a new way to start off the school year will eat this one up.

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In Murray’s children’s debut, when a gingerbread man made by schoolchildren gets left behind at recess, he decides he has to find his class: “I’ll run and I’ll run, / As fast as I can. / I can catch them! I’m their / Gingerbread Man!”

And so begins his rollicking rhyming adventure as he runs, limps, slides and skips his way through the school, guided on his way by the friendly teachers he meets. Flattened by a volleyball near the gym, he gets his broken toe fixed by the kindly nurse and then slides down the railing into the art teacher’s lunch. Then it’s off to the principal’s office, where he takes a spin in her chair before she arrives. “The children you mentioned just left you to cool. / They’re hanging these posters of you through the school.” The principal takes him back to the classroom, where the children all welcome him back. The book’s comic-book layout suits the elementary-school tour that this is, while Lowery’s cartoon artwork fits the folktale theme. Created with pencil, screen printing and digital color, the simple illustrations give preschoolers a taste of what school will be like. While the Gingerbread Man is wonderfully expressive, though, the rather cookie-cutter teachers could use a little more life.

Teachers looking for a new way to start off the school year will eat this one up. (Picture book. 4-7)