A well-meaning and eye-catching work that nevertheless misses the mark.
A self-conscious book meets its perfect reader.
Unlike the library’s more well-known stories, which boast stunning illustrations or golden letters, the titular book has never been read. Shelved in a dark corner, it shies away from readers’ glances, chanting, “I’m just a ghost, nobody can see me.” But one day, a blind girl specifically seeks out the book. It vehemently protests as she starts to open it…and finally it confesses that it’s blank. Undaunted, the girl reveals that the book isn’t meant to be read via sight. Its seemingly blank pages are written in braille, “the language you read with your fingertips.” Happily, the book realizes that “no one story [is] better than any other, that they [are] just different.” Chen’s cut-paper illustrations are striking. Most objects and people, the blind girl included, are the white of the page, which evokes a sense of invisibility, while jewel-toned creatures suggest enticing adventures as they swirl from open books. Sadly, mixed messages mar this tale, translated from Spanish. The book’s being “hidden away” implies that it’s been segregated from the other titles, which feels incongruent with the morals of inclusion and acceptance. While the girl’s “crystal” voice and “bright as a butterfly” laugh suit the story’s fairy tale–esque tone, they may also evoke the trope of portraying disabled people as angelic. Though informative backmatter correctly defines braille as a writing system rather than a language, this important distinction is unfortunately omitted from the primary text.
A well-meaning and eye-catching work that nevertheless misses the mark. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781915244765
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Lantana
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history.
Ferry and the Fans portray a popular seasonal character’s unlikely friendship.
Initially, the protagonist is shown in his solitary world: “Scarecrow stands alone and scares / the fox and deer, / the mice and crows. / It’s all he does. It’s all he knows.” His presence is effective; the animals stay outside the fenced-in fields, but the omniscient narrator laments the character’s lack of friends or places to go. Everything changes when a baby crow falls nearby. Breaking his pole so he can bend, the scarecrow picks it up, placing the creature in the bib of his overalls while singing a lullaby. Both abandon natural tendencies until the crow learns to fly—and thus departs. The aabb rhyme scheme flows reasonably well, propelling the narrative through fall, winter, and spring, when the mature crow returns with a mate to build a nest in the overalls bib that once was his home. The Fan brothers capture the emotional tenor of the seasons and the main character in their panoramic pencil, ballpoint, and digital compositions. Particularly poignant is the close-up of the scarecrow’s burlap face, his stitched mouth and leaf-rimmed head conveying such sadness after his companion goes. Some adults may wonder why the scarecrow seems to have only partial agency, but children will be tuned into the problem, gratified by the resolution.
A welcome addition to autumnal storytelling—and to tales of traditional enemies overcoming their history. (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247576-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Low grade.
A gray character tries to write an all-gray book.
The six primary and secondary colors are building a rainbow, each contributing the hue of their own body, and Gray feels forlorn and left out because rainbows contain no gray. So Gray—who, like the other characters, has a solid, triangular body, a doodle-style face, and stick limbs—sets off alone to create “the GRAYest book ever.” His book inside a book shows a peaceful gray cliff house near a gray sea with gentle whitecaps; his three gray characters—hippo, wolf, kitten—wait for their arc to begin. But then the primaries arrive and call the gray scene “dismal, bleak, and gloomy.” The secondaries show up too, and soon everyone’s overrunning Gray’s creation. When Gray refuses to let White and Black participate, astute readers will note the flaw: White and black (the colors) had already been included in the early all-gray spreads. Ironically, Gray’s book within a book displays calm, passable art while the metabook’s unsubtle illustrations and sloppy design make for cramped and crowded pages that are too busy to hold visual focus. The speech-bubble dialogue’s snappy enough (Blue calls people “dude,” and there are puns). A convoluted moral muddles the core artistic question—whether a whole book can be gray—and instead highlights a trite message about working together.
Low grade. (glossary) (Picture book. 4-6)Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-4340-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Two Lions
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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