An enchanting, dreamlike work.
A girl grieving her mother makes friends with shadows in DePalma’s picture book.
Young, unhappy Bethany Gale, a blond-haired girl with pale skin, moves with her father and dog, Sadie, to her grandmother’s house beside the woods. At night, she whispers to a photograph of a happier time with her mother (“…I love you…goodnight”) before going to sleep. One night, Bethany hears a scratching sound and goes downstairs, thinking it’s Sadie, who’s actually asleep; it’s Sadie’s shadow scratching at the door. Bethany follows it into the woods and discovers that all the town’s shadows escape to the woods to play, dance, and feast: “Well, I’m sure you would too / if you were stuck on like glue / to each person and creature in town.” Luu’s full-color cartoon illustrations of the deep-blue woods, illuminated by neon stars and musical notes, reveal shadows of people and animals celebrating their freedom. The effortless rhyme and vibrant colors meld in an expression of wonder and delight, depicting images that are easy to forget in the daylight, when reality’s easier to see. A great deal is implied in both the illustrations and text, particularly the sense that Bethany’s mother is deceased, and that her spirit is showing Bethany this world; rather than feeling haunting, the presence of the shadows and Bethany’s parent are deeply comforting.
An enchanting, dreamlike work.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781733405522
Page Count: 41
Publisher: Umbrelly Books
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Let these crayons go back into their box.
The Crayons return to celebrate Easter.
Six crayons (Red, Orange, Yellow, Esteban, who is green and wears a yellow cape, White, and Blue) each take a shape and scribble designs on it. Purple, perplexed and almost angry, keeps asking why no one is creating an egg, but the six friends have a great idea. They take the circle decorated with red shapes, the square adorned with orange squiggles “the color of the sun,” the triangle with yellow designs, also “the color of the sun” (a bit repetitious), a rectangle with green wavy lines, a white star, about which Purple remarks: “DID you even color it?” and a rhombus covered with blue markings and slap the shapes onto a big, light-brown egg. Then the conversation turns to hiding the large object in plain sight. The joke doesn’t really work, the shapes are not clear enough for a concept book, and though colors are delineated, it’s not a very original color book. There’s a bit of clever repartee. When Purple observe that Esteban’s green rectangle isn’t an egg, Esteban responds, “No, but MY GOSH LOOK how magnificent it is!” Still, that won’t save this lackluster book, which barely scratches the surface of Easter, whether secular or religious. The multimedia illustrations, done in the same style as the other series entries, are always fun, but perhaps it’s time to retire these anthropomorphic coloring implements. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Let these crayons go back into their box. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-62105-9
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Sweet.
A caregiving bear shares with its cub how love has defined their relationship from the first moment and through the years as the cub has grown.
With rhymes and a steady rhythm that are less singsong-y than similar books, Stansbie seems to have hit a sweet spot for this offering on the I-love-you-always shelf. Readers follow the adult and child as they share special moments together—a sunset, a splash in a pond, climbing a tree, a snuggle—and the adult tells the child that the love it feels has only grown. Stansbie also takes care not to put promises in the adult bear’s mouth that can’t be delivered, acknowledging that physical proximity is not always possible: “Wherever you are, / even when we’re apart… // I’ll love you forever / with all of my heart.” The large trim size helps the sweet illustrations shine; their emphasis is on the close relationship between parent and child. Shaped peekaboo windows offer glimpses of preceding and succeeding pages, images and text carefully placed to work whatever the context. While the die cuts on the interior pages will not hold up to rough handling, they do add whimsy and delight to the book as a whole: “And now that you’re bigger, / you make my heart sing. / My / beautiful / wonderful / magical / thing.” Those last three adjectives are positioned in leaf-shaped cutouts, the turn of the page revealing the roly-poly cub in a pile of leaves, three formed by the die-cuts. Opposite, three vignettes show the cub appreciating the “beautiful,” the “wonderful,” and the “magical.”
Sweet. (Picture book. 3-5)Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68412-910-2
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Silver Dolphin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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