Gleefully distinctive stylings, fluorescent colors, and beautiful bookmaking should make an eager new audience for these old...
Using just three impossibly bright colors, printmaker Yoon illustrates a collection of animal-themed poems of varying familiarity.
There’s a nostalgic feel to the collection, as many poems date from the 19th century—William Blake’s “The Tiger,” Christina Rossetti’s “Caterpillar,” and Lewis Carroll’s “The Crocodile” among them—and none dates later than the mid-20th century. For all that they may be old, however, the poems have a real child friendliness, from the light verse of Ogden Nash (“The Eel”) and Hilaire Belloc (“The Yak”) to the weightier stanzas of D.H. Lawrence (“Humming-bird”) and Walter de la Mare (“Dream Song”). If the poetry delights, the prints dazzle. Layering cyan, magenta, and yellow—and eschewing black—Yoon produces crowded, eye-popping images that will draw children’s attention. There’s a studied, childlike crudeness to her stylings, full of scribbly lines and overlap, that yields great energy. Carolyn Wells’ “Happy Hyena,” its bright pink head wildly out of proportion to its body, wears a green jacket and a yellow waistcoat, playing the concertina as it walks through town. The book’s design offers further surprises. A pink telephone jangles imperiously in a seemingly empty room in Laura Richards’ “Eletelephony,” but a gatefold opens to show an enormous teal-and-purple elephant hopelessly entangled in the telephone’s cord.
Gleefully distinctive stylings, fluorescent colors, and beautiful bookmaking should make an eager new audience for these old poems. (Picture book/poetry. 4-10)Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59270-166-7
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
There’s always tomorrow.
A lyrical message of perseverance and optimism.
The text uses direct address, which the title- and final-page illustrations suggest comes from an adult voice, to offer inspiration and encouragement. The opening spreads reads, “Tonight as you sleep, a new day stirs. / Each kiss good night is a wish for tomorrow,” as the accompanying art depicts a child with black hair and light skin asleep in a bed that’s fantastically situated in a stylized landscape of buildings, overpasses, and roadways. The effect is dreamlike, in contrast with the next illustration, of a child of color walking through a field and blowing dandelion fluff at sunrise. Until the last spread, each child depicted in a range of settings is solitary. Some visual metaphors falter in terms of credibility, as in the case of a white-appearing child using a wheelchair in an Antarctic ice cave strewn with obstacles, as the text reads “you’ll explore the world, only feeling lost in your imagination.” Others are oblique in attempted connections between text and art. How does a picture of a pale-skinned, black-haired child on a bridge in the rain evoke “first moments that will dance with you”? But the image of a child with pink skin and brown hair scaling a wall as text reads “there will be injustice that will challenge you, and it will surprise you how brave you can be” is clearer.
There’s always tomorrow. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-99437-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Perfectly dazzling.
A lyrical, spirited picture book that takes the old “yo’ mama” joke and cracks, snaps, and pops it into an ode to motherhood.
Using a vibrant tattoo motif, colorful, joy-infused artwork, and playful, melodic words, Ramos and Alcántara’s winning picture book celebrates motherhood at its most inspirational. A child and a mother—both with brown skin, long, wavy black hair, and long, bold limbs—spend their days baking and playing, picnicking and protesting, going to the library and taking road trips. It starts with a honeyed bang: “Your Mama So Sweet, She Could Be a Bakery,” spelled out on a ribbon that could adorn a sailor’s arm as narration in regular type expands on this. Each subsequent double-page spread echoes these words (“Your Mama…”), highlighting how this mom’s “so strong,” “so forgiving,” and “so woke.” Notably, readers see a mom that stands alone, strong and defiant, as she walks into her child’s Parent Night at school and strolls through a neighborhood full of friends and passersby. Ramos conjures jubilant scene after scene with deft language and sprinkles of Spanish, and this tale’s more sublime moments (“Your Mama a Brainiac—mo’ betta than any app”) simply shine. Similarly, Alcántara’s art represents motherhood as a model of ideals and mind spun for modern times, both indebted to and limited by the specific type of mother of color depicted here. Overall, it’s a celebration that’s invaluable and needed. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Perfectly dazzling. (Picture book. 4-10)Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-328-63188-6
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Versify/HMH
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2021
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
