Fails to engage.
Ana and her friends enjoy the school playground until they outgrow it in the sixth grade.
On her first day of kindergarten, Ana goes down the slide to her new friends waiting at the bottom to meet her. As the school years go by, each year brings a new source of pleasure on the playground. In the first grade, another new friend encourages her to swing high. In the second grade, an outing to the zoo inspires a monkey game. In the third grade, basketball skills are developed, and in the fourth grade, she teaches her friend to play handball. In the fifth grade, the friends play soccer. But when they get to sixth grade, it is time to leave the playground for the younger kids. As they prepare to leave, they first relive all the games they played throughout their primary school years. Then it is time to say goodbye—until Ana returns to her school and playground, as a teacher. Always dressed in uniforms that suggest a parochial school, perhaps, the children come from different ethnic backgrounds. Ana herself has brown skin and long, black hair. The illustrations have a frozen, static feel, even when portraying the children in full movement, and the retrospective, nostalgic tone seems more appropriate to an adult audience than children. As is often the case with bilingual books, the pages can at times look very text heavy, with English above and Spanish beneath.
Fails to engage. (Bilingual picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-55885-871-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Piñata Books/Arte Público
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity.
A collection of parental wishes for a child.
It starts out simply enough: two children run pell-mell across an open field, one holding a high-flying kite with the line “I wish you more ups than downs.” But on subsequent pages, some of the analogous concepts are confusing or ambiguous. The line “I wish you more tippy-toes than deep” accompanies a picture of a boy happily swimming in a pool. His feet are visible, but it's not clear whether he's floating in the deep end or standing in the shallow. Then there's a picture of a boy on a beach, his pockets bulging with driftwood and colorful shells, looking frustrated that his pockets won't hold the rest of his beachcombing treasures, which lie tantalizingly before him on the sand. The line reads: “I wish you more treasures than pockets.” Most children will feel the better wish would be that he had just the right amount of pockets for his treasures. Some of the wordplay, such as “more can than knot” and “more pause than fast-forward,” will tickle older readers with their accompanying, comical illustrations. The beautifully simple pictures are a sweet, kid- and parent-appealing blend of comic-strip style and fine art; the cast of children depicted is commendably multiethnic.
Although the love comes shining through, the text often confuses in straining for patterned simplicity. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4521-2699-9
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the...
An all-zombie-all-the-time zombiefest, featuring a bunch of grade-school kids, including protagonist Stink and his happy comrades.
This story covers the few days preceding the much-anticipated Midnight Zombie Walk, when Stink and company will take to the streets in the time-honored stiff-armed, stiff-legged fashion. McDonald signals her intent on page one: “Stink and Webster were playing Attack of the Knitting Needle Zombies when Fred Zombie’s eye fell off and rolled across the floor.” The farce is as broad as the Atlantic, with enough spookiness just below the surface to provide the all-important shivers. Accompanied by Reynolds’ drawings—dozens of scene-setting gems with good, creepy living dead—McDonald shapes chapters around zombie motifs: making zombie costumes, eating zombie fare at school, reading zombie books each other to reach the one-million-minutes-of-reading challenge. When the zombie walk happens, it delivers solid zombie awfulness. McDonald’s feel-good tone is deeply encouraging for readers to get up and do this for themselves because it looks like so much darned fun, while the sub-message—that reading grows “strong hearts and minds,” as well as teeth and bones—is enough of a vital interest to the story line to be taken at face value.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7636-5692-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Candlewick
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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