In this tender tale, church-going wins over a relatable father with charm and bite-sized guilt.
Dressed in his Sunday best, Omar goes to church every week with his mother but wishes his dad would come, too.
“Daddy doesn’t go to church,” even as young Omar and his mother prepare to leave home, hoping that he’ll change his mind this time. But Daddy prefers to spend his Sundays “doing much of nothing or a little bit of something.” Paul’s bright, full-colored digital art depicts a Black family that’s nevertheless loving and supportive despite their differences of opinion. As mother and son walk to Ebenezer Church, a community made up of people of varied skin tones greets the duo in the street. In the pews, even as Omar and his best friend, Imani, make funny faces at one another, the absence of Omar’s father is felt. Back at home, Omar’s father has prepared lunch and dinner with his free time, but from Omar’s detailed and earnest narration, it’s clear that he and his mom share a lingering dream of their whole family attending a Sunday service together. Still, “sometimes worship isn’t in a building,” Mom assures son and readers alike. Daddy eventually shows up to church in the suit and tie laid out for him by his loved ones, met by a big, exuberant smile from little Omar—a moment that may read as passive aggressive to some but that will earn smiles from others, particularly those who have found themselves in similar situations.
In this tender tale, church-going wins over a relatable father with charm and bite-sized guilt. (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2025
ISBN: 9781534113336
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs.
The Heffley family’s house undergoes a disastrous attempt at home improvement.
When Great Aunt Reba dies, she leaves some money to the family. Greg’s mom calls a family meeting to determine what to do with their share, proposing home improvements and then overruling the family’s cartoonish wish lists and instead pushing for an addition to the kitchen. Before bringing in the construction crew, the Heffleys attempt to do minor maintenance and repairs themselves—during which Greg fails at the work in various slapstick scenes. Once the professionals are brought in, the problems keep getting worse: angry neighbors, terrifying problems in walls, and—most serious—civil permitting issues that put the kibosh on what work’s been done. Left with only enough inheritance to patch and repair the exterior of the house—and with the school’s dismal standardized test scores as a final straw—Greg’s mom steers the family toward moving, opening up house-hunting and house-selling storylines (and devastating loyal Rowley, who doesn’t want to lose his best friend). While Greg’s positive about the move, he’s not completely uncaring about Rowley’s action. (And of course, Greg himself is not as unaffected as he wishes.) The gags include effectively placed callbacks to seemingly incidental events (the “stress lizard” brought in on testing day is particularly funny) and a lampoon of after-school-special–style problem books. Just when it seems that the Heffleys really will move, a new sequence of chaotic trouble and property destruction heralds a return to the status quo. Whew.
Readers can still rely on this series to bring laughs. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 8-12)Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3903-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.
A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.
Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)
Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)Pub Date: March 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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