Hints of playfulness are squashed beneath the message in this trite consciousness-raiser. Two lads comment on the litter they see while wandering city streets: “ ‘People throw garbage out their windows,’ ” says one as a toilet comes crashing down, “ ‘They throw it out of cars. And someday the cars themselves will be garbage.’ ” The two stand, finally, contemplating a sea of garbage bags and castoffs—until one spots a flower amidst the trash. “ ‘We need less garbage and more flowers . . . It’s up to us.’ ” Testa’s crisp, simple style (A Long Trip To Z, 1997, etc.) is not well-suited to depicting litter; even the rusting hulks in his overstuffed junkscapes have a clean, tidy look, and trash is so neatly drawn that it hardly looks used. This may make a good discussion-starter, especially with younger children, but such calls to action as Christopher Cheng’s One Child (1999) or Loreen Leedy’s Great Trash Bash (1991) convey the problem, and possible responses to it, in more urgent, convincing ways. (Picture book. 5-7)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7358-1451-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: NorthSouth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
``Water is dew. Water is ice and snow.'' No matter what form it takes, seldom has plain old water appeared so colorful as in this rainbow-hued look at rain, dew, snowflakes, clouds, rivers, floods, and seas. Asch celebrates water's many forms with a succinct text and lush paintings done in mostly in softly muted watercolors of aqua, green, rose, blue, and yellow. They look as if they were created with a wet-on-wet technique that makes every hue lightly bleed into its neighbor. Water appears as ribbons of color, one sliding into the other, while objects that are not (in readers' minds) specifically water-like—trees, rocks, roots—are similarly colored. Perhaps the author intends to show water is everything and everything is water, but the concept is not fully realized for this age group. The whole is charming, but more successful as art than science. Though catalogued as nonfiction, this title will be better off in the picture book section. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-7)
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-200189-1
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy.
Robo-parents Diode and Lugnut present daughter Cathode with a new little brother—who requires, unfortunately, some assembly.
Arriving in pieces from some mechanistic version of Ikea, little Flange turns out to be a cute but complicated tyke who immediately falls apart…and then rockets uncontrollably about the room after an overconfident uncle tinkers with his basic design. As a squad of helpline techies and bevies of neighbors bearing sludge cake and like treats roll in, the cluttered and increasingly crowded scene deteriorates into madcap chaos—until at last Cath, with help from Roomba-like robodog Sprocket, stages an intervention by whisking the hapless new arrival off to a backyard workshop for a proper assembly and software update. “You’re such a good big sister!” warbles her frazzled mom. Wiesner’s robots display his characteristic clean lines and even hues but endearingly look like vaguely anthropomorphic piles of random jet-engine parts and old vacuum cleaners loosely connected by joints of armored cable. They roll hither and thither through neatly squared-off panels and pages in infectiously comical dismay. Even the end’s domestic tranquility lasts only until Cathode spots the little box buried in the bigger one’s packing material: “TWINS!” (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-22-inch double-page spreads viewed at 52% of actual size.)
A retro-futuristic romp, literally and figuratively screwy. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-544-98731-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2020
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